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A   SHORT    HISTORY    OF    FREETHOUGHT 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 


ESSAYS  TOWARDS  A  CRITICAL  METHOD. 

NEW  ESSAYS  TOWARDS  A  CRITICAL  METHOD. 

MONTAIGNE  AND  SHAKSPERE. 

BUCKLE  AND   HIS  CRITICS  :  a  Sociological  Study. 

THE  SAXON  AND  THE  CELT  :  a  Sociological  Study. 

MODERN  HUMANISTS:  Studies  of  Carlyle,  Mill,  Emer- 
son, Arnold,  Ruskin,  and  Spencer. 

THE   FALLACY  OF  SAVING  :  a  Study  in  Economics. 

THE  EIGHT  HOURS  QUESTION :  a  Study  in  Economics. 

THE  DYNAMICS  OF^'rELIGION  :  an  Essay  in  English 
Culture-History.     (By  "  M.  W.  Wiseman.") 

PATRIOTISM  AND  EMPIRE. 

STUDIES  IN   RELIGIOUS  FALLACY. 

AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  ENGLISH  POLITICS. 

WRECKING  THE  EMPIRE. 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

PAGAN  CHRISTS. 

CRITICISMS.     2  vols. 

TENNYSON  AND  BROWNING  AS  TEACHERS. 

ESSAYS  IN  ETHICS. 

ESSAYS  IN  SOCIOLOGY.     2  vols. 

LETTERS  ON  REASONING. 

COURSES  OF  STUDY. 

CHAMBERLAIN  :  a  Study. 

DID  SHAKESPEARE  WRITE  "TITUS  ANDRONICUS  "? 


A  SHORT  HISTORY 


OF 


FREETHOUGHT 


ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


BY 


JOHN    M.   ROBERTSON 


SECOND  EDIT! OX,  REWRITTEN  AXD  GREATLY  ENLARGED 


^0  do 
IN  TWO  VOLUMES 

Vol.  II. 


New  York  : 
G.  P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

27  &  29    WEST  TWENTY-THIRD  STREET 
1906 


^^  ^  o 

CONTENTS 


VOLUME  II. 

PAGE 

Chap.  XIII.— The  Rise  ov  Modern  Freethought. 

§   1.      The  Italian  Influence.     The  Sozzini.      Unitarianism 

in  Europe.      Effects  in  Eng-land.     Aconzio.     The 

Catholic  Reaction  in  Italy  ....  i 

§  2.     France.    Desperiers.    Rabelais.    Dolet.   Montaigne. 

Charron  ---...  r 

§3.     England.     Charges  of  Atheism.     Executions  under 

Elizabeth.    Hammond.   Kett.   Marlowe.   Raleigh. 

Shakespeare.     Executions  under  James.     Bacon  23 

§  4.     Popular   Thought    in    Europe.       Callidius.        Flade. 

Wier.   Coornhert.   Grotius.    Gorlsus.   Koerbagh. 

Beverland.     Socinianism.      The   case   of  Spain. 

Cervantes      ------  49 

§  5.     Saientific  Thought.     Copernicus.     Giordano  Bruno. 

Vanini.       Sanchez.      Galileo.      The   Aristotelian 

strife.     Vives.     Ramus.      Descartes.      Gassendi  60 

Chap.   XIV. — British    Freethought   in   the    Seventeenth 

Century. 

§   I.     Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury.     Hobbes.     Selden         -  85 

§  2.  The  popular  ferment  :  attempted  suppression  of 
heresy  by  Parliament.  Lawrence  Clarkson.  The 
Levellers  and  Toleration.  Forms  of  unbelief. 
The  term  "rationalist."  Propaganda  against 
atheism.  Culverwel.  Freethought  at  the 
Restoration.  The  protests  of  Howe,  Stillingfleet, 
and  Baxter.  Freethought  in  Scotland.  The 
argument  of  Mackenzie.  English  Apologetics 
of  Casaubon,  Ingelo,  Temple,  Wilkins,  Tillotson, 
Cudworth,  Boyle,  and  others.  Martin  Clifford. 
Emerg-ence  of  Deism.  Avowals  of  Archdeacon 
Parker.  Charles  Blount.  Leslie's  polemic. 
Growth  of  apologetic  literature.  Toland.  The 
Licensing  Act  -----  92 

§  3.  Literary  and  academic  developments.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  Jeremj-  Taylor.  John  Spencer.  Joseph 
Glanvill.     Cartesianism.      Glisson.      Influence  of 


vi  CONTENTS 


Gassendi.  Unitarianism.  Lord  Falkland.  Colonel 
Fry.  Locke.  The  Marquis  of  Halifax.  Newton. 
Penn.  Tillotson.  Firmin.  Latitudinarianism. 
Dr.  T.  Burnet.  Dr.  B.  Connor.  John  Craig. 
The  "rationalists  "   -----  iio 

Chap,    XV. — British     Freethought     in     the    Eighteenth 

Century. 

§  I.  Toland.  Strifes  among  believers.  Cudworth. 
Bishops  Browne  and  Berkeley.  Heresy  in  the 
Church.  The  Schools  of  Newton,  Leibnitz,  and 
Clarke.  Hutchinson.  Halley.  Provincial  deism. 
Whiston.  Saunderson.  Literary  orthodoxy. 
Addison.  Steele.  Berkeley.  Swift.  New  deism. 
Shaftesbury.  Trenchard.  Lhiitarianism.  Asgill. 
Coward.      Dodwell  -  -  -  -  -  126 

§  2.  Anthony  Collins.  Bentley's  attack.  Mandeville. 
Woolston.  Middleton.  Deism  at  Oxford.  Tindal. 
Elwall.  Berkeley's  polemic.  Lady  Mary 
Montagu.  Pope.  Deism      and     Atheism. 

Strutt.  Parvish.         Influence       of      Spinoza. 

William  Pitt.  Chubb.  Morgan.  Peter  Annet. 
Dodwell  the  Younger.  The  work  achieved  by 
deism.  The  social  situation.  The  intellectual 
success.  Recent  disparagements  and  German 
testimony.  The  arrest  of  English  science. 
Effects  of  imperialism.     Contrast  with  France    -  134 

§  3.      Supposed    "decay"    of  deism.       Butler.       William 

Law.     Hume  -  -  -  -  -  '55 

§  4.  Freethought  in  Scotland.  Execution  of  Thomas 
Aikenhead.  Confiscation  of  innovating  books. 
Legislation  against  deism.  Halyburton's  polemic. 
Strife  over  creeds.  John  Johnston.  William 
Dudgeon.  Hutcheson.  Leechman.  Forbes. 
Millar.  Smith.  Ferguson.  Kames.  Church 
riots.  Freethought  in  Ireland.  Lord  Molesworth. 
Archbishop  Synge.     Bishop  Clayton  -  -  158 

§  5.  Situation  in  England  in  1750.  Richardson's  lament. 
Middleton.  Deism  among  the  clergy.  Sykes. 
The  deistic  evolution.  Materialism.  La  Mettrie. 
Shifting  of  the  social  centre  :  the  industrial  and 
political  forces.  Gray's  avowal.  Hume's  estimate. 
Goldsmith's.       The   later   deism.      Bolingbroke. 

i  Diderot's  diagnosis.     Influence  oi  Voltaire.    Low 

state  of  popular  culture.  Prosecutions  of  poor 
freethinkers.  Jacob  Hive.  Peter  Annet.  Later 
deistic  literature.  The  Wesleyan  revival.  The 
contribution  of  Gibbon.      Burke's  miscalculation. 


CONTENTS  vii 


PAGli 

The  religion  of  the  younger  Pitt.  Geology. 
Hutton.  Cowper's  anger.  Paley's  complaints. 
Commonness  of  unbelief.  Erasmus  Darwin. 
Panic  and  reaction  after  the  French  Revolution. 
New  aristocratic  orthodoxy.  Thomas  Paine. 
New  democratic  freethought  ...  165 

Chap.  XVI. — European   Freethought   from  Descartes  to 
THE  French  Revolution. 

§    I.     France  o)id  Holland. 

1.  Influence    of    Montaigne    and    Charron.       La 

Mothe  le  Vayer.  Gui  Patin.  Naudt^. 
Richelieu  -  -  -  -  -  181 

2.  Descartes's   influence.      Boileau.      Malherbe. 

Jean  Fontanier.  Tht^ophile  de  Viau.  Claude 
Petit.  Corneille.  Moli^re.  Cyrano  de 
Bergerac  -  -  -  -  -  182 

3.  Pascal.     Jansenism.     Bossuet  -  -  -  185 

4.  Huet.     Le  Vassor's  complaint.    Jesuit  polemic  188 

5.  Gassendi  -  -  -  -  -  -  190 

6.  St.  Evremond.     Regnard.     La  Bruy^re.     Fon- 

tenelle  ------  193 

7.  The    Cartesian    school.     Regis.     Desgabets. 

Malebranche   -  -  -  -  -  194 

8.  Richard  Simon.     La  Peyrire     -  -  -  196 

9.  Influence    of    Descartes    in    Holland.     Louis 

Meyer.      Spinoza  _  .  -  -  igy 

10.  Dutch    rationalism.        Le    Clerc.       Spinozistic 

movements.  Deurhoff.  Bekker.  Discus- 
sion on  witchcraft.  "Juan  di  Posos." 
Leenhoff'.     Booms       -  -  -  -  201 

1 1 .  Bayle         ------  203 

12.  Bayle's  influence.    Passerano.     Dutch  literary 

conditions         -----  206 

13.  Spinozism  in  France.     Abbadie's  complaints. 

Decline  in  French  intellectual  prestige. 
Influence  of  Louis  XIV".  Boulainvilliers. 
Ft^nelon.  Chevalier  Ramsay.  Huard.  Marie 
Huber.      Persecution  of  the //zZ/ow/Ar^       -  207 

14.  The  7>5-/aw^«^  of  Jean  Meslier  -  -  -  212 

15.  Voltaire.  Buckle's      chronological      error. 

Frederick  the  Great.  Marchioness  du 
Chatelet.     Voltaire's  influence  -  -  215 

16.  The    EticyclopMie.     The     French    intellectual 

evolution.   Bibliographical  outline.   Burigny. 

Fr^ret.      Dumarsais.      Pr^montval    -  -  222 

17.  The    orthodox    defence.      Bergier.      English 

estimates  and  misconceptions  -  -  228 


viii  CONTENTS 


232 

234 

236 
239 


18.  The  main  body  of  deists.      Raynal  an  excep- 

tion.    Rousseau  -  .  .  . 

19.  The      literary     development.        Montesquieu. 

Official  toleration         -  .  .  . 

20.  La  Mettrie.   The  scientific  movement.    Buffon. 

Maupertiiis.   Robinet.    Helvetius.    Beccaria  236 

21.  Diderot     ------ 

22.  D'Alembert.     D'Holbach  -  -  -  243 

23.  Situation  at  the  Revolution.    Volney.    Dupuis. 

Condorcet         -----  244 

24.  The  anti-deistic  leg-end  -  -  -  -  245 

[a)  The    leading-  revolutionists  deistic,  not 

atheistic.  The      orthodox      types  : 

Gregore.     Action  of  the  clergy  -  246 

[b)  Deistic  measures.     No  new  State  cult. 

The  alleged  Cult  of  Reason.  Free- 
thought  among  the  priests.  Reason 
and  Deity.  Hubert.  Chaumette. 
Clootz      -----  248 

[c)  Robespierre.      The    Terror  :    its    deistic 

associations.      Salaville  the  atheist       -  250 

25.  Origination  of  the  legend.    Rivarol.    Influence 

of  the  "  philosophic  "  schools.  Frederick's 
estimate.     The  Revolution  and  Rousseau  -  250 

§   II.      Germany. 

1.  The    Lutheran    decadence.      Orthodox  apolo- 

gfetics.  Alsted.  The  Thirt}-  Years'  War. 
The  Peace  of  Westphalia.  Traces  of  un- 
belief during  the  war.  Resulting;  skepticism. 
New  apolog-etics.  Knutzen  and  his  move- 
ment     ------  254 

2.  Influence    of  Spinoza.     Favour  shown  to  him. 

Opposition.    F.  W.  Stosch.    Bibliographical 

sketch  ------  257 

3.  Leibnitz    ------  259 

4.  Influence  of  Leibnitz.     Pietism.     Rationalist 

reaction.     The  name  Freigeist  -  -  261 

5.  Christian  Thomasius.     His  influence    -  -  263 

6.  Dippel        ------  264 

7.  T.  L.  Lau  -----  265 

8.  Wolft"         -  -  -  -  .  -  266 

9.  New  rationalism.     J.  L.  Schmidt.     Edelmann. 

J.  F.  W.  Jerusalem      -  .  -  -  266 

10.     Eng-lish  and  French  influences.    Optimism  and 

pessimism.     Haller.    Euler.     The  argument 

from     ignorance.       Decay    of    orthodoxy. 

Influence  of  the  king  .  _  .  269 

ir.      Frederick  .  -  .  -  -  272 


CONTENTS  ix 


PACK 

12.  Nicolai  and  his  publications.     Riem.     Schade. 

Basedow.     Eberhard.     Spalding.     Teller  -  274 

13.  Clerical  rationalism.      Semler  -  -  -  277 

14.  Balirdt       ......  278 

15.  Mendelssohn.     Reimarus.     Lessing-     -  -  281 

16.  \'og'ue  of  deism.   Wieland.    Isenbiehl.   Further 

clerical  rationalism.  Schulz.  Orthodox  and 
official    reaction.       The    Moroccan     Letters. 

Mauvillon.  The  edict  of  repression.   Herder  285 

17.  Goethe       ------  290 

18.  Schiller      ------  292 

19.  Kant  ------  293 

20.  Influence     of    Kant.       The    sequel.       Fichte. 

Erhard.      Hamann       .  .  -  -  300 

21.  Other      philosophic      movements.         Crusius. 

Tetens.  Platner.  Pyrrhonism  of  Beau- 
sobre.  Fichte's  development.  Strifes  of 
the  post-Kantians.  Nugatoriness  of  the 
theistic  constructions.  Thought  in  Austria. 
Rule  of  the  Jesuits.     Jahn.      Beethoven       -  302 

§   III.      The  remaining  European  States. 

1.  The    reformation  in    Denmark    and    Sweden. 

Gustavus     Vasa.       Christina.      Puffendorf. 

Count  Struensee  .  -  -  -  306 

2.  Poland.      Liszinski.     Russia.     Peter  the  Great 

and  the  monks.      Catherine    -  -  -  308 

3.  Italy.     Spanish  misrule.     Tuscany.      The  two 

Ferdinands.      Naples    under    Carpi.      Vico. 

His  influence    -----  309 

4.  Beccaria  and  the  economists     -  -  -  312 

5.  Algarotti.       Filangieri.       Galiani.      Genovesi. 

Alfieri.  Bettinelli.  Dandolo.  Leopold  of 
Tuscany.      Fall  of  the  Jesuits   •  -  -  313 

6.  Spain.     Aranda.     The    rule    of    Charles    III. 

The  Catholic  reaction  -  -  -  314 

7.  Portugal.     Pombal  -  -  -  -  315 

8.  Switzerland  -----  S'a 

Chap.  XVH.— Early  Freethought  in  the  United  States. 

1.  Deism  of  the  revolutionary  statesmen-  -  317 

2.  First  traces  of  unbelief  Franklin  -  -  317 
Jefferson.  John  Adams.  Washington  -  318 
Thomas  Paine  -----  320 
Paine's  treatment  in  America    -             -             -  321 

6.     Palmer.     Houston.     Deism  and  Unitarianism  322 


Chap.  XVIII.— FreethougHt  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

General  outline  -  -  -  -  -  3^5 


CONTENTS 


§   I.     Popular  Propaganda. 

1.  The    influence    of    Paine.     Watson's     Reply. 

Translations  from  the  French.  Houston. 
Wedderburn.  Richard  Carlile  and  his  co- 
adjutors. Taylor.  Southwell  and  his  co- 
adjutors.     Hetherington         .  .  .  ^27 

2.  Robert  Owen  and  his  movement.      G.   and  A. 

Combe.  G.  J,  Holyoake.  Bradlaug-h  and 
the  Secularist  movement.  The  Bradlaugh 
strug-gle.  Trial  of  G.  W.  Foote.  Results 
to  freethought.      Case  of  Mrs.  Besant  -  332 

3.  The  United  States:     France.     Movements  of 

Fourier,   Saint-Simon,  and  Comte.      Other 
Catholic  countries.    Spain.    Holland.     Free 
thought  journalism      .  -  .  .  336 

4.  Germany.        Freethought    after    the    war    of 

Liberation.        Religious      reaction.  The 

"Friends  of  Light. "  Freethought  in  1848. 
"Free-religious"  societies.  Organised 
freethought.  German  police  laws.  Marx, 
Bebel,  and  Liebknecht.  German  free- 
thought  in  the  United  States  -  -  338 

5.  "  Free-religious "     societies    in    America    and 

England.  Fox,  Conway^  and  South  Place 
Chapel.  The  Ethical  Societies.  The 
Labour  Churches         -  -  -  -  342 

6.  Unitarianism         .  _  .  .  -  ^43 

7.  Academic    freethinking    in   France.      Opinion 

in  1830.  Academic  freethought  in  Switzer- 
land. The  religious  revolt.  Decline  of 
Swiss  clericalism  and  orthodox}-.  Critical 
thought  in  Holland.  The  Transvaal.  Re- 
sults of  the  South  African  War         -  -  345 

8.  Popukir  freethought  in  the  Catholic  countries. 

Belgium.    Spain.    Portugal.    France.    Italy. 

The  South  American  Republics         -  -  348 

9.  Popular  freethought  in  Sweden  -  -  349 

Scholarly  and  other  Biblical  Criticism. 

1.  German    rationalism.      Schleiermacher.      The 

evolution  to  Strauss.  Persecution.  Leeway 
in  research.  Unsuccessful  new  departures. 
Ghillany.      Daumer     .  -  -  -  351 

2.  The  German  academic  evolution.      Decay  of 

interest  in  theology     -  -  -  -  354 

3.  Progress   in   England  and  the  L^nited  States. 

Unitarianism.  Hennell.  Parker.  F.  W. 
Newman.  R.  W.  Mackay.  Greg.  Thomas 
Scott.    \y.  R.  Casscls' Si/per>iatii>-al PcligioH  356 


CONTENTS  xi 


4.  Rationalism  in  France.    Larroque.    D'Eichthal. 

Peyrat.     Renan.     Havet       -  -  .  358 

5.  The  hig'her  criticism.      Eichhorn's  successors. 

Geddes.  Colenso.  Kuenen.  W'ellhausen. 
Smith.  Kalisch.  New  Testament  criticism 
to  Schmiedel.     Unitarian  propaganda  -  358 

6.  Assyriology  .  -  .  .  .  360 

§   III.      The  Natural  Sciences. 

1.  Astronomy.      Effects   of   the    Copernican    and 

Newtonian  systems.  Laplace's  theory. 
Readjustment  of  theism.     Miracles  -  361 

2.  Biology.      Lawrence        .  -  -  -  362 

3.  Geology.     Werner  and  Hutlon.     Hugh  Miller  363 

4.  Zoology.      Erasmus    Darwin.        Saint-Hilaire. 

Goethe.     The  Orthodox  resistance  -  365 

5.  Evolutio7iary    Biology.         Robert    Chambers. 

Orthodox  vilification  -  -  -  -  366 

6.  Dar7vitiis>n.     C.    Darwin  and    Wallace.     The 

orthodox  attack.  Wilberforce  and  Huxley. 
Luthardt.     Carlyle  on  Darwin  -  -  366 

7.  Collapse  of  deism.      Developments  of  Darwin- 

ism.    Haeckel  .  -  -  -  368 

g   IV.     Abstract  Philosophy  and  Ethics. 

1.  The  German  successors  of  Kant.     Hegel  and 

his  school.  Bruno  Bauer.  Schopenhauer. 
Hartmann.      Nietzsche  -  -  -  3^9 

2.  Feuerbach.      Biichner     -  -  -  -  37' 

3.  Philosophy    in    France    after  the   Revolution. 

Maine  de  Biran.  De  Maistre.  Cousin. 
Jouffroy.      Lamennais.      Damiron      -  -  37^ 

4.  Auguste  Comte.     Taine  -  -  -  374 

5.  Philosophy  in  Britain.    Bentham.     James  Mill. 

George  Grote.      Influence  of  Utilitarianism  375 

6.  Hamilton.    Mansel.    Spencer.    The  Hegelians  376 

7.  Rationalism  within  the  Church.     Influence  of 

Coleridge.      Maurice.      Parr  -  -  -  377 

8.  Unitarianism.     Emerson.     Parker       -  -  37^ 

V.      The  Sociological  Sciences. 

1.  Deism   and    sociology.       Salverte.       Charles 

Comte.    Auguste  Comte.    Draper.  Buckle. 

Spencer.     Recent  sociology  -  -            -           379 

2.  Anthropology  and  mythology    -  -            -380 

3.  Psychology.      Phrenology          -  -            -          381 


VI.     Poetry  and  Fin e  Lette rs. 

1.     France  after  the  Revolution.     Chateaubriand 
and  his  school  -  -  '  ' 


382 


xii  CONTENTS 


2.  Later     French    literature.        JVIichelet.       The 

novelists  -  .  .  .  .  ^84 

3.  French  poetry.    Berang'er.   De  Musset.    Hugo. 

Leconte  de  Lisle.     Neurotic  relig-ion  -  385 

4.  Eng^lish  poetry.      Shelle}'.      Coleridg-e.     Scott. 

Byron.     Southey.      Keats      -  -  .  386 

5.  Tennyson.       Browning.       Clough.       Arnold. 

Swinburne.     James  Thomson  -  -  3S8 

6.  The  case  of  Charles  Lamb         .  .  .  389 

7.  Carlyle.      Emerson.      Ruskin.     Arnold  -  391 

8.  The  novelists.      George  Eliot.      Recent  fiction  392 

9.  The  case  of  Richard  Jefferies    -  -  -  393 

10.  Belles   Lcttres   in    the    United    States.     Haw- 

thorne. Poe.  Emerson.  Thoreau. 

Whitman.      Howells.      H.  James.     Holmes. 
Higginson.      Conway  .  -  .  39^ 

11.  Itah'.      Leopardi.     Germany.     Kleist.     Heine. 

Auerbach.      Heyse.     Wagner  -  -  395 

12.  Russia.    Bit^linsky.   Granovsky.    Tourguenief. 

Tolstoy.    Gorky.    The  Scandinavian  States  398 

Chap.  XIX. — The  State  of  Thought  in  the  Nations. 

§  I.  Britain  and  the  United  States.  Conventional 
dissimulation.  Romilly.  Brougham.  Carlyle. 
Mill.  Fronde.  Macaulay.  Bain  on  Carlyle, 
IMacaulay,  and  Lyell.  The  economic  pressure. 
Mr.  Morley.  Sir  L.  Stephen.  Difficulties  as  to 
endowing  rationalism.  Position  oi  freethought 
lecturers.  Optimistic  miscalculations.  Cases  of 
reversion.  Vogue  of  paralogism.  Drummond. 
Rarity  of  best  propagandist  type.  Clifford. 
Huxley.  Pressures  in  the  United  States.  Lincoln. 
Douglass.  Grant.  Ingersoll.  Journalism.  Clerical 
obscurantism.  Conflicting  forces  in  the  churches. 
Politics  and  freethought.  Neutral  propaganda. 
The  Free  Church  quarrel  in  Scotland.  Stress  of 
life  in  the  United  States.  Australia  and 
New  Zealand.  Unitarianism.  Romanism  and 
Ritualism.  Welcome  given  to  new  works  of 
apologetics.  Intellect  in  the  Church  of  England. 
Freethought  among  women.  Harriet  Martineau. 
George  Eliot.     Mrs.  Besant.     Frances  Wright    -  400 

§  2.  Tlie  Catholic  Countries.  Sharp  division  between 
faith  and  rationalism.  Revival  of  Italy.  Leopardi. 
Mazzini.  Garibaldi.  Gubernatis.  France. 
Gambetta.  Paris  Municipal  Council.  Position 
of  women.      Socialism  -  -  -  -  414 

§  3.     Germany.     Bureaucratism  and  reaction.     Virchow. 


CONTENTS  xiii 


Catholicism.  The  theological  chairs.  Ten- 
dencies to  reversion.  Harnack.  The  Social 
Democrats.  Influence  ot"  Marx,  En^-els,  and 
Bebel-  -  -  -  -  -  -  417 

§  4.  Russia  and  the  Scandinavian  States.  The  Scandi- 
navian conditions.  Russia.  Popular  ignorance. 
The  intelliguentia.      Present  prospects      -  -  419 

§  5.  Modern  Jewry.  Part  played  by  Jews  in  freethougfht 
history.  Jewish  deism  in  eighteenth  century. 
Rabbi  Elijah.     Krochmal.     Present  tendencies    -  421 

§  6.  The  Oriental  Civilisations.  Asiatic  ignorance. 
The  new  birth  of  Japan.  Popular  religion  there. 
Attitude  of  Fukuzawa.  The  social  problem. 
Vogue  of  religion.  Estimates  of  Japanese 
thought  :  Chamberlain,  Griffis,  Tracy,  Dixon, 
Hearn,  Gulick,  Parker.  Dependenceof  rationalism 
on  culture.  lyeyasu.  Transition  from  old  to 
new.  Thought  in  China.  Freethought  in  Islam. 
Prospects  in  India.  Buddhism  in  Burmah. 
Modern  Brahmanism.  Chaitanya.  Nanak  and 
the  Sikhs.  The  Jainas.  The  Brahmo-Somaj 
movement.  Turkey.  Christian  Greece.  Con- 
clusion: preoccupations  of  social  and  intellectual 
problems        -  -  -  -  4^2 


Chapter  XIII. 
THE    RISE    OF    MODERN    FREETHOUGHT 

§  I.   The  Italian  Influence. 

The  negative  bearing  of  the  Reformation  on  freethought 
is  made  clear  by  the  historic  fact  that  the  new  currents 
of  thought  which  broadly  mark  the  beginning  of  the 
"modern  spirit"  arose  in  its  despite,  and  derive 
originally  from  outside  its  sphere.  It  is  to  Italy,  where 
the  political  and  social  conditions  always  tended  to 
frustrate  the  Inquisition,  that  we  trace  the  rise  alike  of 
modern  deism,  modern  Unitarianism,  modern  pan- 
theism, modern  physics,  and  the  tendency  to  rational 
atheism.  The  deistic  way  of  thinking,  of  course, 
prevailed  long  before  it  got  that  name  ;  and  besides  the 
vogue  of  Averroi'sm  we  have  noted  the  virtual  deism  of 
More's  Utopia  (1515).  The  first  explicit  mention  of 
i^  deism  noted  by  Bayle,  however,  is  in  the  epistle  dedica- 
,^  tory  to  the  second  and  expanded  edition  of  the  Instruc- 
•^  tion  Chretienne  of  the  Swiss  Protestant  Viret  (1563), 
,  where  professed  deists  are  spoken  of  as  a  new  species 
^  bearing  a  new  name.  On  the  admission  of  Viret,  who 
was  the  friend  and  bitter  disciple  of  Calvin,  they  rejected 
all  revealed  religion,  but  called  themselves  deists  by  way 
of  repudiating  atheism  ;  some  keeping  a  belief  in  immor- 
tality, some  rejecting  it.  In  the  theological  manner  he 
goes  on  to  call  them  all  execrable  atheists,  and  to  say 
that  he  has  added  to  his  treatise  on  their  account  an 
exposition  of  natural  religion  grounded  on  the  "  Book  of 
Nature  ";  stultifying  himself  by  going  on  to  say  that  he 
has  also  dealt  with  the  professed  atheists.'     Of  the  deists 

'  Bayle,  Dictionnaire,  art.  Viret,  note  D. 

I 


2  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

he  admits  that  among  them  were  men  of  the  highest 
repute  for  science  and  learning.  Thus  within  ten  years 
of  the  burning  of  Servetus  we  find  privately  avowed 
deism  and  atheism  in  the  area  of  French-speaking 
Protestantism. 

Doubtless  the  spectacle  of  Protestant  feuds  and 
methods  would  ^o  far  to  foster  such  unbelief;  but 
though,  as  we  have  seen,  there  were  aggressive  Uni- 
tarians in  Germany  before  1530,  who,  being  scholars, 
may  or  may  not  have  drawn  on  Italian  thought,  there- 
after there  is  reason  to  look  to  Italy  as  the  source  of 
the  propaganda.  Thence  came  the  two  Sozzini,  the 
founders  of  Socinianism,  of  whom  Lelio,  the  uncle  of 
Fausto,  travelled  much  in  northern  Europe  (including 
England)  between  1546  and  1552.'  Before  Socinianism 
had  taken  form  it  was  led  up  to,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the 
later  writings  of  the  ex-monk  Bernardino  Ochino  (1487- 
1564),  who,  in  the  closing  years  of  a  much  chequered 
career,  combined  mystical  and  Unitarian  tendencies 
with  a  leaning  to  polygamy  and  freedom  of  divorce.^ 
His  influence  was  considerable  among  the  Swiss  Protes- 
tants, though  they  finally  expelled  him  for  his  heresies. 
From  Geneva  or  from  France,  in  turn,  apparently  came 
some  of  the  English  freethought  of  the  middle  period  of 
the  sixteenth  century  ;-5  for  in  1562  Speaker  Williams  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  in  a  list  of  misbelievers,  speaks 
of  "  Pelagians,  Libertines,  Papists,  and  such  others, 
leavinsf  God's  commandments  to  follow  their  own  tradi- 
tions,  affections,  and  minds  "'^ — using  theologically  the 
foreign  term,  which  never  became  naturalised  in  English 

'  Calvin,  scenting'  his  heresy,  warned  him  in  1552  (Bayle,  art. 
Marianus  Socin,  the  first,  note  B);  but  they  remained  on  surprisingly 
good  terms  till  Lelio's  death  in  1562.  Cp.  Stahelin,  Johannes  Calvin, 
ii,  321-8. 

-  Cp.  Bayle,  art.  Ochin  ;  Miss  M.  E.  Lowndes,  Michel  de  Montaigne, 
p.  266  ;  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance^  p.  588  ;  Benrath, 
Bernardino  Ochino  of  Siena,  Eng".  trans.  1876,  pp.  268-272.  McCrie 
mentions  {Reformation  in  Italy,  ed.  1856,  p.  228,  note)  that  Ochino's 
dialogue  on  polygamy  has  been  translated  and  published  in  England 
"  by  the  friends  of  that  practice." 

3  Above,  vol.  i,  pp.  473-4. 

■»  D'Ewes,  Journals  of  Parliament  in  the  Reign  of  Elizabeth,  1682,  p.  65. 


THE  ITALIAN  INFLUENCE 


in  its  foreign  sense.  It  was  about  the  year  1563,  again, 
that  Roger  Ascham  wrote  his  Schole?naster,  wherein  are 
angrily  described,  as  a  species  new  in  England,  men 
who,  "where  they  dare,"  scorn  both  Protestant  and 
Papist,  rejecting  scripture,  and  counting  the  Christian 
mysteries  as  fables."'  He  describes  them  as  "  aOtoi  in 
doctrine";  adding,  "this  last  word  is  no  more  unknowne 
now  to  plane  Englishe  men  than  the  Person  was  unknown 
somtyme  in  England,  untill  some  Englishe  man  took 
peines  to  fetch  that  develish  opinion  out  of  Italic."^ 
The  whole  tendency  he  connects  in  a  general  way  with 
the  issue  of  many  new  translations  from  the  Italian, 
mentioning  in  particular  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio. 
Among  good  Protestants  his  view  was  general  ;  and  so 
Lord  Burghley  in  his  Advice  to  his  Son  writes  :  "  Suffer 
not  thy  sons  to  pass  the  Alps,  for  they  shall  learn 
nothing  there  but  pride,  blasphemy,  and  atheism."  As 
it  happened,  his  grandson  the  second  Earl  of  Exeter, 
and  his  great-grandson  Lord  Roos,  went  to  Rome  and 
became  not  atheists  but  Roman  Catholics. 

Like  the  old  Averroism,  the  new  pietistic  Unitarianism 
persisted  in  Italy  and  radiated  thence  afresh  when  it 
had  flagged  in  other  lands.  The  exploded  Unitarian 
tradition^  runs  that  the  doctrine  arose  in  the  year  1546 
among  a  group  of  more  than  forty  learned  men  who 
were  wont  to  assemble  in  secret  at  Vicenza,  near 
Venice.  In  point  of  fact,  Melanchthon  comments  on 
Unitarianism  at  Venice  in  1538  ;^  and  Servetus,  the 
alleged  source  of  the  earlier  Venetian  movement,  after 
intercourse  with  Lutherans  in  Germany,  had  put  forth 
his  anti-trinitarian  doctrines  as  early  as  1531  and  1532. 
Claudius  of  Savoy,  too,  emphatically  gave  out  his 
at  Berne  in  1534,  after  having  been  imprisoned  at 
Strasburg  and  banished  thence  ;'"  and  Ochino  and  Lelio 

'  See  above,  vol.  i,  p.  474. 
"   The  Schole master,  Arber's  rep.  p.  82. 
3  See  McCrie,  Reformation  in  Italvycd.  1856,  pp.  96-99. 
^  Id.  p.  96. 

5  Trechsel,  Die  Protestantischen  Antitrinitarier  vor  Faustus Socinus ,  \ 
(1839),  56;   Mosheim,  16  Cent.  3rd  sec.  Pt.  ii,  ch.  iv,  §  3. 


4  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Sozzini  left  Italy  in  1543.  But  there  seems  to  have 
been  a  continuous  evolution  of  Unitarian  heresy  in  the 
south  after  the  German  movement  had  ceased.  Giorgio 
Biandrata,  whom  we  have  seen  flying  to  Poland  from 
Geneva,  had  been  seized  by  the  Inquisition  at  Pavia 
for  such  opinion.  Still  it  persisted.  In  1562,  Giulio 
Guirlando  of  Treviso,  and  in  1566  Francesco  Saga  of 
Rovigo,  were  burned  at  Venice  for  anti-Trinitarianism. 
Giacomo  Aconzio,  too,  who  dedicated  his  Stratagems  of 
Satan  (Basel,  1565)  to  -Queen  Elizabeth,  and  who 
pleaded  notably  for  the  toleration  of  heresy,'  was  a 
decided  latitudinarian.' 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  whole  ferment  occurs  in  the 
period  of  the  Catholic  Reaction,  the  Council  of  Trent, 
and  the  subjection  of  Italy,  when  the  Papacy  was 
making  its  great  effort  to  recover  its  ground.  It  would 
seem  that  in  the  compulsory  peace  which  had  now  fallen 
on  Italian  life  men's  thoughts  turned  more  than  ever  to 
mental  problems,  as  had  happened  in  Greece  after  the 
rise  of  Alexander's  empire.  The  authority  of  the  church 
was  outwardly  supreme  ;  the  Jesuits  had  already  begun 
to  do  great  things  for  education  ;3  the  revived  Inquisi- 
tion was  everywhere  in  Italy;  its  prisons,  as  we  have 
seen,  were  crowded  with  victims  of  all  grades  during 
a  whole  generation  ;  Pius  V  and  the  hierarchy  every- 
where sought  to  enforce  decorum  in  life  ;  the  "  pagan  " 
academies  formed  on  the  Florentine  model  were  dis- 
solved ;  and  classic  culture  rapidly  decayed  with  the 
arts,  while  clerical  learning  flourished,^  and  a  new 
religious  music  began  with  Palestrina  ;  yet  on  the  death 
of  Paul  IV  the  Roman  populace  burned  the  Office  of  the 
Inquisition  to  the  ground  and  cast  the  Pope's  statue  into 

'  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  82. 

^  Art.  ACONTIUS,  in  Diet,  of  National  Biog.  Cp.  J.  J.  Tayler,  Retro- 
spect of  the  Religious  Life  of  England,  2nd  ed.  pp.  205-6.  As  to  the 
attack  on  latitudinarianism  in  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  see  above, 
vol.  i,   p.  475. 

3  Bacon,  Advancement  of  Learning,  B.  i  ;  Filiim  Labyrinthi,  §  7 
(Routledg-e's  ed.  pp.  50,  63,  209). 

■t  Cp.  Zeller,  Hist,  de  I'ltalie,  pp.  400-412;  Greene,  Short  Hist.  ch. 
viii,  §  2. 


FRANCE 


the  Tiber  ;'  and  in  that  age  (1548)  was  born  Giordano 
Bruno,  one  of  the  types  of  modern  freethought. 

§  2.  France. 

In  the  other  countries  influenced  by  ItaHan  culture  in 
the  sixteenth  century  the  rationalist  spirit  had  various 
fortune.  The  true  renascence  of  letters  in  France  had 
begun  before  and  gone  on  during  the  Reformation 
period  ;  and  all  along  it  showed  a  tincture  of  free- 
thought.  From  the  midst  of  the  group  who  laid  the 
foundations  of  French  Protestantism  by  translations  of 
the  Bible  there  comes  forth  the  most  articulate  free- 
thinker of  that  age,  Bonaventure  Desperiers,  author 
of  the  Cymhaliim  Mundi  {\>,^i).  Early  associated  with 
Calvin  and  Olivetan  in  revising  the  translation  of  the 
Bible  by  Lefevre  d'Etaples  (rev.  1535),  Desperiers 
turned  away  from  the  Protestant  movement,  as  did 
Rabelais  and  Dolet,  caring  as  little  for  the  new  presbyter 
as  for  the  old  priest  ;  and  all  three  were  duly  accused  by 
the  Protestants  of  atheism  and  liber tinage.''  In  the 
same  year  Desperiers  aided  Dolet  to  produce  his  much- 
praised  Commentarii  linguae  latinae ;  and  within  two 
years  he  had  printed  his  own  satire,  Cymbaliun  Mundi^'^ 
wherein,  by  way  of  pagan  dialog'ues,  are  allegorically 
ridiculed  the  Christian  scheme,  its  miracles,  Bible  con- 
tradictions, and  the  spirit  of  persecution,  then  in  full  fire 
in  France  against  the  Protestants.  The  allegory  is  not 
always  clear  to  modern  eyes  ;  but  there  was  no  question 
then  about  its  general  bearing  ;  and  Desperiers,  though 
groom  of  the  chamber  (after  Clement  Marot)  to  Mar- 
guerite of  France  (later  of  Navarre),  had  to  fly  for  his 

'  McCrie,  p.  164.  It  was  said  by  Scaliger  that  "  in  the  time  of 
Pius  IV  [between  Paul  IV  and  Pius  V]  people  talked  very  freely  in 
Rome."     Id.  ib.  note. 

^  Notice  of  Bonaventure  Desperiers,  by  Bibliophile  Jacob,  in  1841  ed. 
of  Cyiiibahitu  Mitndi,  etc. 

3  For  a  solution  of  the  enig-ma  of  the  title  see  the  Clef  oi  Eloi  Johan- 
neau  in  ed.  cited,  p.  83.  The  book  is  dedicated  by  Thomas  Du  Clevier 
a  son  ami  Pierre  Tyrocan,  which  is  found  to  be,  with  one  letter  altered 
(perhaps  by  a  printer's  error),  an  anagram  for  Thomas  Incrddule  ii  son 
ami  Pierre  Crovant,  '■'  Unbelieving-  Thomas  to  his  friend  Believing 
Peter."     Clef  ci'ted,  pp.  80-85. 


6  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

life  as  Marot  did  before  him.  The  first  edition  of  his 
book,  secretly  printed  at  Paris,  was  seized  and  destroyed  ; 
and  the  second  (1538),  printed  for  him  at  Lyons,  whither 
he  had  taken  his  flight,  seems  to  have  had  a  similar 
fate.  From  that  time  he  disappears,  probably  dying, 
whether  or  not  by  suicide  is  doubtful,'  before  1544,  when 
his  miscellaneous  works  were  published.  They  include 
his  CEuvres  Diverses — many  of  them  graceful  poems 
addressed  to  his  royal  mistress.  Marguerite — which,  with 
his  verse  translation  of  the  Andria  of  Terence  and  his 
Discoiirs  non  plus  Melancoliques  que  Divers,  make  up  his 
small  body  of  work.  In  the  Discours  may  be  seen 
applied  to  matters  of  history  and  scholarship  the  same 
critical  spirit  that  utters  itself  in  the  Cymbalum,  and  the 
same  literary  gift ;  but  for  orthodoxy  his  name  became 
a  hissing  and  a  byword,  and  it  is  only  in  modern  times 
that  French  scholarship  has  recognised  in  Desperiers 
the  true  literary  comrade  and  potential  equal  of  Rabelais 
and  Marot.-  The  age  of  Francis  was  too  inclement  for 
such  literature  as  his  Cymbalum ;  and  it  was  much  that 
it  spared  Gringoire  (d.  1544),  who,  without  touching 
doctrine,  satirised  in  his  verse  both  priests  and  Pro- 
testants. 

It  is  something  of  a  marvel,  further,  that  it  spared 
Rabelais  (?  1493-1553),  whose  enormous  raillery  so 
nearly  fills  up  the  literary  vista  of  the  age  for  modern 
retrospect.  It  has  been  said  by  a  careful  student  that 
"the  free  and  universal  inquiry,  the  philosophic  doubt, 
which  were  later  to  work  the  glory  of  Descartes,  proceed 
from  Rabelais  ";3  and  it  is  indeed  an  impression  of 
boundless  intellectual  curiosity  and  wholly  unfettered 
thinking  that  is  set  up  by  his  entire  career.  Educated 
at  a  convent  school,  he  had  the  luck  to  have  for  school- 
fellows the  four  famous  brothers  Du  Bellay,  so  well  able 

'  The  readiness  of  piety  in  all  ages  to  inv^ent  frig-htful  deaths  for 
unbelievers  must  be  remembered  in  connection  with  this  and  other 
records.      Cp.  Notice  cited,  p.  xx,  and  note. 

=  So  Charles  Nodier,  cited  in  the  Notice  by  Bibliophile  Jacob,  pp.  xxiii- 
xxiv. 

3  Perrens,  Les  Libertins  en  France  au  XVIIe  sibcle,  1896,  p.  41. 


FRANCE 


to  protect  him  in  later  life  ;  and,  forced  to  spend  fifteen 
years  of  his  young  life  (1509-24)  as  a  Franciscan  monk, 
he  turned  the  time  to  account  by  acquiring  an  immense 
erudition,  including  a  knowledge  of  Greek,  then  rare." 
Naturally  the  book-lover  was  not  popular  among  his 
fellow-monks  ;  and  his  Greek  books  were  actually 
confiscated  by  the  chapter,  who  found  in  his  cell  certain 
writings  of  Erasmus.  Thereafter,  by  the  help  of  the 
friendly  bishop  of  the  diocese,  Rabelais  received  papal 
permission  to  join  the  order  of  the  Benedictines  (1524)  ; 
but  soon  after,  though  he  was  a  fully-ordained  priest, 
we  find  him  broken  loose,  and  living  for  some  six  years 
a  life  of  wandering  freedom,  winning  friends  in  high 
places  by  his  learning  and  his  gaiety,  everywhere 
studying  and  observing.  In  1530  he  is  found  at  Mont- 
pellier,  extending  his  studies  in  medicine,  in  which  he 
speedily  won  distinction,  becoming  a  lecturer  in  the 
following  year.  He  was  esteemed  one  of  the  chief 
anatomists  of  his  day,  being  one  of  the  first  to 
dissect  the  human  body  and  to  insist  on  the  need  of 
such  training  for  physicians  ;-  and  in  1532  he  published 
at  Lyons  an  edition  of  the  Latin  letters  of  the  Ferrarese 
physician  Mandard  ;  and  his  own  commentaries  on 
Galen  and  Hippocrates. ^  At  Lyons  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Dolet,  Marot,  and  Desperiers  ;  and  his 
letter  (of  the  same  year)  to  Erasmus,  addressed  as 
Bernard  de  Salignac,  showed  afresh  how  his  intellectual 
sympathies  went. 

In  1533  began  his  series  of  almanacks,  continued  till 
1550,  presumably  as  printer's  hack-work.  Only  one  of 
them  seems  to  have  been  comic;  and  this,  which  alone 
has  been  preserved  entire,  passes  hardy  ridicule  on 
astrology,"*  one  of  the  most  popular  superstitions  of  the 


'  Notice  historiquc  in  Bibliophile  Jacob's  ed.  of  Rabelais^  1841  ;  Stapfer, 
Rabelais,  pp.  6,  10. 

^  Le  Double,  Rabelais  ayiatomiste  et  physiologiste,  1889,  pp.  12,  42^  ; 
and  pref.  by  Professor  Duval,  p.  xiii  ;  Stapfer,  p.  42. 

3  In  the  same  year  he  was  induced  to  publish  what  turned  out  to  be 
two  spurious  documents  purporting  to  be  ancient  Roman  remains.  See 
Heulhard,  Rabelais  legiste.  ^  Stapfer,  pp.  24-25. 


8  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

day,  among  high  and  low  ahke.  Just  before,  he  had 
begun  to  handle  the  famous  names  and  figures  of 
Pantagruel  and  Gargantua  ;  and  almost  immediately 
the  Sorbonne  was  on  his  track,  condemning  his  Panta- 
gruel \n  1533.  A  journey  soon  afterwards  to  Rome,  in 
the  company  of  his  friend  Bishop  Jean  du  Bellay,  the 
French  ambassador,  may  have  saved  him  some  personal 
experience  of  persecution.  Two  years  later,  when  the 
Bishop  went  to  Rome  to  be  made  cardinal,  Rabelais 
again  accompanied  him;  and  this  time  he  obtained  from 
Pope  Clement  VII  an  absolution  for  his  breach  of  his 
monastic  vows,  with  permission  to  practise  medicine  in  a 
Benedictine  monastery.  Shortly  before,  his  little  son 
Theodule  had  died  ;'  and  it  may  have  been  grief  that 
inspired  such  a  desire:  in  any  case,  the  papal  permission 
was  never  used,""  though  the  pardon  was  doubtless 
serviceable.  Taking  his  degree  as  doctor  at  Mont- 
pelier  in  1537,  he  recommenced  a  wandering  life. 

In  this  period  Rabelais  had  seen  cause  to  modify  a 
number  of  the  hardier  utterances  in  the  original  issues 
of  the  first  two  books  of  his  Pantagruel,  notably  his 
many  epithets  aimed  at  the  Sorbonne. ^  In  the  reprints 
there  are  substituted  for  Biblical  names  some  drawn 
from  heathen  mythology  ;  expressions  too  strongly 
savouring  of  Calvinism  are  withdrawn  ;  and  disrespectful 
allusions  to  the  kings  of  France  are  elided.  Calvin,  who 
had  once  been  his  friend,  had  in  his  book  De  Scandalis 
angrily  accused  him  of  lihertinage,  profanity,  and 
atheism  ;  and  henceforth,  like  Desperiers,  he  was  as 
little  in  sympathy  with  Protestantism  as  with  the  zealots 
of  Rome.  In  his  concern  to  keep  himself  safe  with  the 
Sorbonne  he  even  made  a  rather  unworthy  attack  (1542) 
on    his    former   friend    Etienne    Dolet    for   the    mere 


'  Rathery,  Notice  biog.  in  edit.  Firmin  Didot,  i,  71  ;  Stapfer,  pp.  42-43. 

^  Stapfer,  p.  53. 

3  See  the  list  in  the  avertissement  of  M.  Burgaud  des  Marets  to  ^d. 
Firmin  Didot.  Cp.  Stapfer,  pp.  63,  64.  For  example,  the  "  theolog^ian  " 
who  makes  the  ludicrous  speech  in  Liv-.  i,  ch.  19,  becomes  (cc.  18  and 
20)  a  "sophist";  and  the  sorbonistes,  sorhonicoles,  and  sorbonagres  of 
cc.  20  and  21  become  mere  mnistres,  magistres,  and  sopliistes  likewise. 


FRANCE 


oversight  of  reprinting  one  of  his  books  without  deleting 
passages  which  Rabelais  had  expunged  ;'  but  no  expur- 
gation could  make  his  evaugile^  as  he  called  it,  a 
Christian  treatise,  or  keep  for  him  an  orthodox  reputa- 
tion ;  and  it  was  with  much  elation  that  he  obtained  in 
1545  from  King  Francis — whose  private  reader  was  his 
friend  Duchatel,  Bishop  of  Tulle — a  privilege  to  print 
the  third  book  of  Pantagntel,  which  he  issued  in  1546, 
signed  for  the  first  time  with  his  name,  and  prefaced  by 
a  cry  of  jovial  defiance  to  the  "  petticoated  devils  "  of  the 
Sorbonne.  They  at  once  sought  to  convict  him  of 
fresh  blasphemies  ;  but  even  the  thrice-repeated  substi- 
tution of  an  11  for  an  m  in  dme,  making  "ass"  out  of 
"soul,"  was  carried  off,  by  help  of  Bishop  Duchatel,  as 
a  printer's  error;  and  the  king,  having  laughed  like 
other  readers,  maintained  the  imprimatur. 

It  was  on  the  death  of  Francis  in  1547  that  Rabelais 
ran  his  greatest  danger,  having  to  fly  to  Metz,  where 
for  a  time  he  acted  as  salaried  physician  of  the  city. 
In  1549,  however,  on  the  birth  of  a  son  to  Henri  II,  his 
friend  Cardinal  Bellay  returned  to  power,  and  Rabelais 
to  court  favour  with  him.  The  derider  of  astrology  did 
not  scruple  to  cast  a  prosperous  horoscope  for  the  infant 
prince — justifying  by  strictly  false  predictions  his  own 
estimate  of  the  art,  since  the  child  died  in  the  cradle. 
There  was  now  eftected  the  dramatic  scandal  of  the 
appointment  of  Rabelais  in  1550  to  two  parish  cures, 
one  of  which,  Meudon,  has  given  him  his  most  familiar 
sobriquet.  He  seems  to  have  left  both  to  be  served  by 
vicars  f  but  the  wrath  of  the  church  was  so  great  that 
early  in  1552  he  resigned  them  ;3  proceeding  immediately 


"  R.  Christie,  Afienne  Dolef,  pp.  369-372.  Mr.  Christie,  in  his  vacil- 
lating way,  severely  blames  Dolet,  and  then  admits  that  the  book  may 
have  been  printed  while  Dolet  was  in  prison,  and  that  in  any  case  there 
was  no  malice  in  the  matter.  This  point,  and  the  persistent  Catholic 
calumnies  ag-ainst  Dolet,  are  examined  by  the  author  in  art.  "The  Truth 
about  Etienne  Dolet,"  in  National  Refonner,  June  2nd  and  9th,  1889. 

-  Jacob,  Notice,  p.  Ixiii  ;  Stapfer,  p.  76. 

3  So  Rathery,  p.  60,  and  Stapfer,  p.  78.  Jacob,  p.  Ixii,  says  he  resigned 
only  one.  Rathery  makes  the  point  clear  by  giving  a  copy  of  the  act  of 
resignation  as  to  Meudon. 


lo  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

afterwards  to  publish  the  fourth  book  of  Pantagruel,  for 
which  he  had  duly  obtained  official  privilege.  As  usual, 
the  Sorbonne  rushed  to  the  pursuit  ;  and  the  Parlement 
of  Paris  forbade  the  sale  of  the  book  despite  the  royal 
permission.  That  permission,  however,  was  reaffirmed  ; 
and  this,  the  most  audacious  of  all  the  writings  of 
Rabelais,  went  forth  freely  throughout  France.  In  the 
following  year,  his  work  done,  he  died. 

It  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  intellectual  effect  of  his 
performance,  which  was  probably  much  greater  at  the 
end  of  the  century  than  during  his  life.  His  vast 
innuendoes  by  way  of  jests  about  the  people  of  Ruach 
(the  Spirit)  who  lived  solely  on  wind  ;'  his  quips  about 
the  "reverend  fathers  in  devil,"  of  the  "  diabological 
faculty";^  his  narratives  about  the  Papefigues  and 
Papimanes ;^  and  his  gibes  at  the  Decretals, ^  were 
doubtless  enjoyed  by  many  good  Catholics,  other- 
wise placated  by  his  attacks  on  the  "demoniacal  Calvins, 
impostors  of  Geneva  "i^  and  so  careful  was  he  on 
matters  of  dogma  that  it  remains  impossible  to  say  with 
confidence  whether  or  not  he  finally  believed  in  a  future 
state. '^  That  he  was  a  deist  or  Unitarian  seems  the 
reasonable  inference  as  to  his  general  creed  ;7  but  there 
also  he  throws  out  no  negations — even  indicates  a  genial 
contempt  for  the  philosophe  ephectiqiie  et  pyj-rhonien^ 
who  opposes  a  halting  doubt  to  two  contrary  doctrines. 
In  any  case,  he  was  anathema  to  the  heresy-hunters  of 
the  Sorbonne,  and  only  powerful  protection  could  have 
saved  him.  Dolet  was  at  least  no  more  of  an  unbeliever 
than  he  ;  but  where  Rabelais  could  with  ultimate 
impunity  ridicule  the  whole  machinery  of  the  church, ^ 
Dolet,   after  several   iniquitous  prosecutions,    in   which 

'  Liv.  iv,  ch.  43.  ^  Liv,  iii,  ch.  23. 

3  Liv.  iv,  ch.  45-48.  '*  Liv.  iv,  ch.  49  sq.  5  Liv.  iv,  ch.  32. 

*  Professor  Stapfer,  Rabelais,  sa  personne,  son  g^nie,  son  oetivre,  1889, 
pp.  365-8.  Cp.  the  Notice  of  Bibliophile  Jacob,  ed.  1841  of  Rabelais, 
pp.  Ivii-lviii  ;  and  Perrens,  Les  Libertins,  p.  39.  In  his  youth  he  affirmed 
the  doctrine.     Stapfer,  p.  23. 

7  Cp.  Rent^  Millet,  Rabelais,  1892,  pp.  172-180.  Ramus,  whom  Rabelais 
had  derided,  accused  him  of  atheism.     Jacob,  p.  Ixx. 

^  Liv.  iii,  ch.  36.  ^  Cp.  Voltaire,  Lcttres  sur  Rabelais,  etc.,  i. 


FRANCE  1 1 


his  jealous  rivals  in  the  printing  business  took  part,  was 
finally  done  to  death  in  priestly  revenge'  for  his  youthful 
attack  on  the  religion  of  inquisitorial  Toulouse,  where 
gross  pagan  superstition  and  gross  orthodoxy  went 
hand  in  hand.^  The  second  last  attack  on  him  was  for 
publishing  Protestant  books  and  French  translations  of 
the  Bible  :  the  last  was  a  hypocritical  charge  of  mis- 
translating the  dying  speech  of  Socrates.  Of  the  free- 
thought  of  such  an  age  there  could  be  no  adequate 
record.  Its  tempestuous  energy,  however,  implies  not  a 
little  of  private  unbelief  ;  and  at  a  time  when  in  England, 
two  generations  behind  France  in  point  of  literary 
evolution,  there  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  measure  of 
rationalism  among  religionists,  there  must  have  been  at 
least  as  much  in  the  land  of  Rabelais  and  Desperiers. 
The  work  of  Guillaume  Postell,  De  causis  sen  principiis 
et  originihiis  Nahirce  contra  Atheos,  published  in  1552, 
testifies  to  kinds  of  unbelief  that  outwent  the  doubt  of 
Rabelais  ;  though  Postell's  general  extravagance  dis- 
counts all  of  his  utterances.  It  is  said  of  Guillaume 
Pellicier  (1527-1568),  Bishop  of  Montpellier,  who  first 
turned  Protestant  and  afterwards  atheist,  that  he  would 
have  been  burned  but  for  the  fact  of  his  consecration.-^ 

Among  the  eminent  ones  then  surmised  to  lean  some- 
what to  unbelief  was  the  sister  of  King  Francis, 
Marguerite  of  Navarre,  whom  we  have  noted  as  a 
protectress  of  the  pantheistic  Libertini,  denounced  by 
Calvin.  She  is  held  to  have  been  substantially  skeptical 
until  her  forty-fifth  year  ;■*  though  her  final  religiousness 
seems  also  beyond  doubt.^  In  her  youth  she  bravely 
protected  the  Protestants  from  the  first  persecution  of 
1523  onwards;  and  the  strongly  Protestant  drift  of  her 
Miroir  de  Vanie  pecheresse  exasperated  the  Catholic 
theologians;  but  after  the  Protestant  violences  of  1546 

'  Cp.  author's  art.  above  cited. 
^  Christie,  Eiienne  Dolef,  pp.  105-6. 

3  Perrens,  Les  Lihertins,  p.  43,  citing-  Patin,  Lettres,  i,  210. 
''  Ch.  Nodier,  quoted  by  Bibliophile  Jacob  in  ed.  of  Cymbahim  Muiidi, 
as  cited,  p.  xviii. 

5  Cp.  Brantome,    Des  daittes  illustres.     CEuvres,  ed.  1838,  ii,  186. 


12  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


she  seems  to  have  sided  with  her  brother  against  the 
Reform.'  The  strange  taste  of  the  Heptameron,  of 
which  again  her  part-authorship  seems  certain,^  consti- 
tutes a  moral  paradox  not  to  be  solved  save  by  recog- 
nising in  her  a  woman  of  genius,  whose  alternate 
mysticism  and  bohemianism  expressed  a  very  ancient 
duality  in  human  nature. 

A  similar  mixture  will  explain  the  intellectual  life  of 
the  poet  Ronsard.  A  persecutor  of  the  Huguenots, ^^  he 
was  denounced  as  an  atheist  by  two  of  their  ministers  ;'^ 
and  the  pagan  fashion  in  which  he  handled  Christian 
things  scandalised  his  own  side,  albeit  he  was  hostile 
to  Rabelais.  But  though  the  spirit  of  the  French 
Renaissance,  so  eagerly  expressed  in  the  Defense  et 
Illustration  de  la  langiie  frangoise  of  Joachim  du  Bellay 
(1549),  is  at  its  outset  as  emancipated  as  that  of  the 
Italian,  we  find  Ronsard  in  his  latter  years  edifying  the 
pious. 5  Any  ripe  and  consistent  rationalism,  indeed, 
was  then  impossible.  One  of  the  most  powerful  minds 
of  the  age  was  Bodin  (1530-96),  whose  Republique  is 
one  of  the  most  scientific  treatises  on  government 
between  Aristotle  and  our  own  age,  and  whose 
Colloquium  Heptaplomeres^  is  no  less  original  an  outline 
of  a  naturalist^  philosophy.  It  consists  of  six  dialogues, 
in  which  seven  men  take  part,  setting  forth  the  different 
religious  standpoints  of  Jew,  Christian,  pagan,  Lutheran, 
Calvinist,  and  Catholic,  the  whole  leading  up  to  a 
doctrine  of  tolerance  and  universalism.  Bodin  was 
repeatedly   and    emphatically    accused    of    unbelief    by 


'  Bayle,  Dictiumiaire,  art.  MARGrERlTE  DE  Navarre  (the  First),  notes 
F  and  G. 

-  Bayle,  note  N.  Cp.  Nodier,  as  cited,  p.  xix,  as  to  the  collaboration 
of  Desperiers  and  others. 

3  Bayle,  art.  Ronsard,  note  D. 

"*  Garasse,  La  Doctrine  Curicusc  des  Beaux  Esprits  de  cc  Temps,  1623, 
pp.  126-7.  Ronsard  replied  to  the  charge  in  his  poem,  Des  miseres  dii 
temps. 

5  Bayle,  art.  Ronsard,  note  O.     Cp.  Perrens,  Lcs  Libertins,  p.  43. 

*  MS.  1588.  First  printed  in  1841  by  Guhrauer,  again  in  1857  bv 
L.  Noack. 

'J  As  before  noted,  he  seems  to  have  coined  the  word.  Cp.  Lechler, 
Geschichte  des  englischen  Deismus,  pp.  31,  455,  notes. 


FRANCE  13 


friends  and  foes  ;'  and  his  rationalism  on  some  heads  is 
beyond  doubt ;  yet  he  not  only  held  by  the  belief  in 
witchcraft,  but  wrote  a  furious  treatise  in  support  of  it  ;^ 
and  he  dismissed  the  system  of  Copernicus  as  too  absurd 
for  discussion. '  He  also  formally  vetoes  all  discussion 
on  faith,  declaring  it  to  be  dangerous  to  religion  ;■*  and 
by  these  conformities  he  probably  saved  himself  from 
ecclesiastical  attack. s  Nonetheless,  he  essentially  stood 
for  religious  toleration  :  the  new  principle  that  was  to 
change  the  face  of  intellectual  life.  A  few  liberal 
Catholics  shared  it  with  him  to  some  extent^  long"  before 
St.  Bartholomew's  Day  ;  eminent  among  them  being 
L'Hopital,^  whose  humanity,  tolerance,  and  concern 
for  practical  morality  and  the  reform  of  the  church 
brought  upon  him  the  charge  of  atheism.  He  was, 
however,  a  believing  Catholic.^  Deprived  of  power,  his 
edict  of  tolerance  repealed,  he  saw  the  long  and  ferocious 
struggle  of  Catholics  and  Huguenots  renewed,  and 
crowned  by  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day 
(1572).  Broken-hearted,  and  haunted  by  that  monstrous 
memory,  he  died  within  six  months. 

Two  years  later  there  was  put  to  death  at  Paris,  by 


'  Bayle,  art.  Bodin,  note  O.  Cp.  Renan,  Averroes,  36  edit.  p.  424  ; 
and  the  Lettres  de  Giii  Putin,  iii,  679  (letter  of  27  juillet,  1668),  cited  by 
Perrens,  Les  Libertins,  p.  43.  Leibnitz,  in  an  early  letter  to  Jac. 
Thomasius,  speaks  of  the  MS.  of  the  Colloquium,  then  in  circulation,  as 
proving'  its  writer  to  be  "  the  professed  enemy  of  the  Christian  religion," 
adding':  "  Vanini's  dialog'ues  are  a  trifle  in  comparison."  (Philosophisrhe 
Schriften,  ed.  Gerhardt,  i,  26  ;  Martineau,  Sfudy  of  Spinoza,  1882,  p.  77.) 
Carriere,  however,  notes  (^Weltanschauung,  p.  317)  that  in  later  years 
Leibnitz  learned  to  prize  Bodin's  treatise  hig'hly. 

^  Cp.  Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  ed.  1887,  i,  66,  87-91.  In  the 
R^publique,  too,  he  has  a  chapter  on  astrolog'y,  to  which  he  leans  some- 
what. 3  R^publique,  Liv.  iv,  ch.  2. 

■*  Id.  Liv.  iv,  ch.  7.  "Bodin  iti  this  sophistry  was  undoubtedly  insincere  " 
(Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  159).  ^  Cp.  Perrens,  Les  Libertins,^.  43. 

*  Cp.  Villemain,  Vie  de  L'Hopital,  in  Etudes  de  I'histoire  moderne,  1846, 

PP-  363-8,  428. 

7  Buckle  (3-V0I.  ed.  ii,  10;  i  vol.  ed.  p.  291)  errs  in  representing 
L'Hopital  as  the  only  statesman  of  the  time  who  dreamt  of  toleration. 
It  is  to  be  noted,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  Hugfuenots  themselves  pro- 
tested ag'ainst  any  toleration  of  atheists  or  Anabaptists  ;  and  even  the 
reputed  freethinker  Gabriel  Naudt^,  writing  in  1639,  defended  the 
massacre  on  political  g'rounds  (Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance, 
p.  470,  note).  Bodin  implicitly  execrated  it.  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe, 
ii,  162.  '^  Villemain,  p.  429. 


14  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


hanging  and  burning,  on  the  charge  of  atheism, 
Geoffroi  Vallee,  a  man  of  good  family  in  Orleans. 
Long  before,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  he  had  written  a 
freethinking  treatise  entitled  La  Beatitude  des  Chretiens, 
OIL  le  fleau  de  la  foy.  He  had  been  the  associate  of 
Ronsard,  who  renounced  him,  and  helped,  it  is  said,  to 
bring  him  to  execution.'  It  is  not  unlikely  that  a 
similar  fate  would  have  overtaken  the  famous  Protestant 
scholar  and  lexicographer,  Henri  Estienne  (1532-1598), 
had  he  not  died  unexpectedly.  His  repute  of  being  "  the 
prince  of  atheists  "^  and  the  "  Pantagruel  of  Geneva"  was 
probably  due  in  large  part  to  his  sufficiently  audacious 
Apologie  pour  Herodote  (1566)  and  to  his  having 
translated  into  Latin  (1562)  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus 
Empiricus,  a  work  which  clearly  made  for  freethink- 
ing. In  that  book  he  had  spoken,  either  ignorantly  or 
ironically,  of  the  "  detestable  work  of  Bonaventure 
Desperiers,"^  but  his  own  performance  was  nearly  as 
well  fitted  to  cause  scandal. 

One  literary  movement  towards  better  things  had 
begun  before  the  crowning  infamy  of  the  Massacre 
appalled  men  into  questioning  the  creed  of  intolerance. 
Castalio,  whom  we  have  seen  driven  from  Geneva  by 
Calvin  in  1544  for  repugning  to  the  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination, published  pseudonymously,  in  1554,  in 
reply  to  Calvin's  vindication  of  the  slaying  of  Servetus, 
a  tract,  De  Haereticis  quomodo  cum  iis  agendum  sit 
variorum  SententicE,  in  which  he  contrived  to  collect 
some  passage  from  the  Fathers  and  from  modern  writers 
in  favour  of  toleration.  To  these  he  prefaced,  by  way  of 
a  letter  to  the  Duke  of  Wirtemberg,  an  argument  of  his 
own,  the  starting-point  of  much  subsequent  propa- 
ganda.'*     Aconzio,    mentioned   above,    followed    in    his 

'  Garasse,  Doctrine  Ciirieitse,  pp.  125-6 ;  Mdmoires  de  Garasse,  ed. 
Ch.  Nisard,  i860,  pp.  77-78  ;   Perrens,  p.  43. 

*  Bibliophile  Jacob,  Introd.  to  Beroalde  de  Verville. 

3  Cymhaluni  Miindi,  ed.  Bibliophile  Jacob,  pp.  xx,  13. 

''  Bayle,  Dictionnaire,  art.  Castalion  ;  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  81  ; 
Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  ii,  46-49.  Hallam  finds  Castalio's  letter 
to  the  Duke  of  Wirtemberg-  "cautious";  but  Mr.  Lecky  quotes  some 
strong;  expressions   from  what   he  describes   as  the  preface  of  Martin 


FRANCE  15 


Steps  ;  and  later  came  Mino  Celso  of  Siena,  with  his 
"  long  and  elaborate  argument  against  persecution,"  De 
Haereticis  capitali  siipplicio  non  ajjiciendis  (1584).' 
Withal,  Castalio  died  in  beggary,  ostracised  alike 
by  Protestants  and  Catholics,  and  befriended  only 
by  the  Sozzini,  whose  sect  was  the  first  to  earn  collec- 
tively the  praise  of  condemning  persecution.^  But  in 
the  next  generation  there  came  to  reinforce  the  cause  of 
humanity  a  more  puissant  pen  than  any  of  these  ;  while 
at  the  same  time  the  recoil  from  religious  cruelty  was 
setting  many  men  secretly  at  utter  variance  with  faith. 

In  France  in  particular  a  generation  of  insane  civil 
war  for  religion's  sake  must  have  gone  far  to  build  up 
unbelief.  Already  in  1552  we  have  seen  Guillaume 
Postell  publishing  his  book,  Contra  Atheos.  Unbelief 
increasing,  there  is  published  in  1564  an  Atheomachie 
by  one  De  Bourgeville  ;  but  the  Massacre  must  have 
gone  far  to  frustrate  him.  In  1581  appears  another 
Atheomachie,  on  refutation  des  erreiirs  et  impietes  des 
AtheisteSy  Libertins,  etc.,  issued  at  Geneva,  but  bearing 
much  on  French  life  ;  and  in  the  same  year  is  issued  the 
long-time  popular  work  of  Philippe  de  Mornay,  De  la 
verite  de  la  religion  Chrestienne,  Contre  les  Athees, 
Epiciiriens,  Payens,  Jnifs,  Mahiunedistes,  et  autres 
Inji  deles. 

Published  at  Antwerp.  It  was  reprinted  in  1582,  1583,  and 
1590;  translated  into  Latin  in  1583,  and  frequently  reprinted  in 
that  form  ;  translated  into  English  in  1587,  and  in  that  form  at 
least  thrice  reprinted.  In  both  the  Epistle  Dedicatory  (to  Henry 
of  Navarre)  and  the  Preface  the  author  speaks  of  the  great 
multiplication  of  unbelief,  the  refutation  of  which  he  declares 
to  be  more  needful  among  Christians  than  it  ever  had  been 
among  the  heathen.  But,  like  most  of  the  writers  against 
atheism  in  that  age,  he  declares  (Eng.  trans,  ed.  1604,  p.  10)  that 
there  are  no  atheists  save  a  few  young  fools  and  utterly  bad  men. 

Bellius  (Castalio's  pseudonym)  to  Gluten's  De  Haereticis  persequendis, 
ed.  1610.  Castalio  died  in  1563.  As  to  his  translations  from  the  Bible, 
see  Bayle's  note. 

'   Hallam,  ii,  83  ;   McCrie,  Ref.  in  Italy,  ed.  1856,  p.  231. 

^  Even  Stahelin  {Johannes  Calvin,  ii,  303)  condemns  Calvin's  action 
and  tone  towards  Castalio,  though  he  makes  the  significant  remark  that 
the  latter  "treated  the  Bible  pretty  much  as  any  other  book." 


i6  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Yetagain,  in  1586,  Christophe  Cheffontaines  published 
his  Epitome  novce  illustrationis  Christiajiae Fidei adversus 
Impios,  Libertinos  et  Atlieos ;  and  still  skepticism  gained 
ground,  having  found  a  new  and  potent  mouthpiece. 

In  the  greatest  French  writer  of  that  age,  a  professed 
Catholic,  but  in  mature  life  averse  alike  to  Catholic  and 
to  Protestant  bigotry,  the  shock  of  the  Massacre  can  be 
seen  disintegrating  once  for  all  the  spirit  of  faith.  Mon- 
taigne typifies  the  pure  skepticism  produced  in  an 
unscientific  age  by  the  practical  demonstration  that 
religion  can  avail  immeasurably  more  for  evil  than  for 
good.'  A  few  years  before  the  Massacre  he  had  trans- 
lated for  his  dying  father'  the  old  TJieologia  Natiiralis  of 
Raymond  of  Sebonde  ;  and  we  know  from  the  later 
Apology  in  the  Essays  that  freethinking  contemporaries 
declared  the  argument  oi  Raymond  to  be  wholly  insuffi- 
cient. ^  It  is  clear  from  the  same  essay  that  Montaigne 
felt  as  much  ;  though  the  gist  of  his  polemic  is  a 
vehement  attack  upon  all  forms  of  confident  opinion, 
religious  and  anti-religious  alike.  "  In  replying  to 
arguments  of  so  opposite  a  tenour,  Montaigne  leaves 
Christianity,  as  well  as  Raimond  Sebonde,  without  a 
leg  to  stand  upon.  He  demolishes  the  arguments  of 
Sebonde  with  the  rest  of  human  presumption,  and  allows 
Christianity,  neither  held  by  faith  nor  provable  by 
reason,  to  fall  between  the  two  stools."^  The  truth  is 
that  Montaigne's  essays  are  the  product  of  a  mental 
evolution  spread  over  at  least  twenty  years.  In  his 
youth  his  vivid  temperament  kept  him  both  credulous 
and  fanatical,  so  much  so  that  in  1562  he  took  the  reck- 
less oath  prescribed  by  the  Catholic  Parlement  of  Paris. 


"^  "  Our  religion,"  he  writes,  "  is  made  to  extirpate  vices  ;  it  protects, 
nourishes,  and  incites  them  "  [Essais,  B.  ii,  ch.  12  ;  ed.  Firmin-Didot,  ii, 
464).      "There  is  no  enmity  so  extreme  as  the  Christian." 

-  Mr.  Owen  was  mistaken  {Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance,  1893, 
p.  414)  in  supposing-  that  Montaig^ne  spent  several  years  over  this  trans- 
lation. It  was  done  rapidly-  Cp.  Miss  M.  E.  Lowndes'  excellent 
monog^raph,  Michel  de  Montaigne,  1898,  pp.  103,  106. 

3  Ed.  Firmin-Didot,  ii,  469. 

"t  Miss  Lowndes,  as  cited,  p.  145.  Cp.  E.  Champion,  Introduction  aux 
Essais  de  Montaigne,  1900. 


FRAXCE  17 


Beginning  to  recoil  from  the  ferocities  and  iniquities  of 
the  League,  he  remained  for  a  time  hotly  anti-Protes- 
tant ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  his  dislike  of  Protestant 
criticism  that  led  him  to  run  amuck  against  reason,  at 
the  cost  of  overthrowing  the  treatise  he  had  set  out  to 
defend.  The  common  end  of  such  petulant  skepticism 
is  a  plunge  into  uneasy  yet  unreasoning  faith  ;  but, 
though  Montaigne  professed  Catholicism  to  the  end, 
the  utter  wickedness  of  the  Catholic  policy  made  it 
impossible  for  him  to  hold  sincerely  to  the  creed  any 
more  than  to  the  cause.'  It  was  the  Massacre  that  above 
all  made  Montaigne  renounce  public  life  ;-  it  must  have 
affected  likewise  his  working  philosophy. 

That  philosophy  was  not,  indeed,  an  original  con- 
struction :  he  found  it  to  his  hand  partly  in  the  deism 
of  his  favourite  Seneca  ;  partly  in  the  Hypotyposcs  of 
Sextus  Empiricus,  of  which  the  Latin  translation  is 
known  to  have  been  among  his  books  ;  from  which  he 
took  several  of  the  mottoes  inscribed  on  his  library 
ceiling, 3  and  from  which  he  frequently  quotes  towards 
the  end  of  his  Apology.  The  body  of  ideas  compacted 
on  these  bases  cannot  be  called  a  system:  it  was  not  in 
Montaigne's  nature  to  frame  a  logical  scheme  of  thought ; 
and  he  was  far  from  being  the  philosophic  skeptic  he  set 
out  to  be^  by  way  of  confounding  at  once  the  bigots  and 
the  atheists.  As  he  put  it  in  a  passage  added  to  the 
later  editions  of  the  Essais^^  he  was  a  kind  of  metis, 
belonging  neither  to  the  camp  of  ignorant  faith  nor  to 
that   of  philosophic   conviction,    whether    believing   or 

'  For  a  view  of  Montaigne's  development  see  M.  Champion's  excellent 
Introduction — a  work  indispensable  to  a  full  understanding-  of  the 
Essais. 

-  Cp.  the  Essais,  B.  iii,  ch.  i  (ed.  Firmin-Didot,  ii,  208).  Mr.  Owen 
gives  a  somewhat  misleading  idea  of  the  passage  [French  Skeptics, 
p.  486). 

3  Miss  Lowndes,  Michel  de  Montaigne,  p.  131.      Cp.  Mr.  Owen,  p.  444. 

•*  He  was  consistent  enough  to  doubt  the  new  cosmology  of  Copernicus 
{Essais,  as  cited,  i,  615)  ;  and  he  even  made  a  childish  attack  on  the 
reform  of  the  Calendar  (liv.  iii.  cc.  x,  xi)  ;  but  he  was  a  keen  and  con- 
vinced critic  of  the  prevailing  abuses  in  law  and  education.  Mr.  Owen's 
discussion  of  his  opinions  is  illuminating  ;  but  that  of  Champion  makes  a 
still  more  searching  analysis  as  regards  the  conflicting  tendencies  in 
Montaigne.  s  Liv.  i,  ch.  54. 

VOL.    II  C 


1 8  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

unbelieving.  But  on  the  other  hand  his  whole  habit  of 
mind  is  perfectly  fatal  to  orthodox  religion  ;  and  it  is 
clear  that,  despite  his  professions  oi  conformity,  he  did 
not  hold  the  ordinary  Christian  beliefs.'  Whatever  he 
might  say  in  the  Apology^  in  the  other  essays  he 
repeatedly  reveals  a  radical  unbelief.  The  essay  on 
Custom  strikes  at  the  root  of  all  orthodoxv,  with  its 
thrusts  at  "  the  gross  imposture  of  religions,  wherewith 
so  many  worthy  and  sufficient  men  have  been  besotted 
and  drunken,"  and  its  terse  avowal  that  "miracles  are 
according  to  the  ignorance  w^ierein  we  are  by  nature, 
and  not  according  to  nature's  essence."-  Above  all,  he 
rejected  the  great  superstition  of  the  age,  the  belief  in 
witchcraft.  His  function  in  literature  was  thus  to  set  up 
a  certain  mental  atmosphere,-^  and  this  the  extraordinary 
vitality  of  his  utterance  enabled  him  to  do  to  an  incal- 
culable extent.  He  had  the  gift  to  disarm  or  at  least  to 
baffle  hostility,  to  charm  kings,"*  to  stand  free  between 
warring  factions.  No  book  ever  written  conveys  more 
fully  the  sensation  of  a  living  voice  ;  and  after  three 
hundred  years  he  has  as  friendly  an  audience  as  ever. 

Mr.  Owen  notes  {Fre7ich  Skeptics,  p.  446  ;  cp.  Champion, 
pp.  i68-t))  that,  though  the  Papal  curia  requested  him  to  alter 
certain  passages  in  the  Essays,  "  it  cannot  be  shown  that  he 
erased  or  modified  a  single  one  of  the  points."  Sainte-Beuve, 
indeed,  has  noted  many  safeguarding-  clauses  added  to  the  later 
versions  of  the  essay  on  Prayers  (i,  56)  ;  but  they  really  carry 
further  the  process  of  doubt.  M.  Champion  has  well  shown 
how  the  profession  of  personal  indecision  and  mere  self-por- 
traiture served  as  a  passport  for  utterances  which  would  have 
brought  instant  punishment  on  an  author  who  showed  any 
clear  purpose.  As  it  was,  nearly  a  century  passed  before  the 
Essais  were  placed  upon  the  Roman  Index  Librorum  Prohibi- 
toriim  (1676). 

The  momentum  of  such  an    influence  is  seen  in  the 

'  Cp.  the  clerical  protests  of  Sterling-  (Lo?id.  and  Wesfiii.  Revieiv,  July, 
1838,  p.  346)  and  Dean  Church  {Oxfoi'd  Essays,  p.  279)  with  the  judgment 
of  M.  Champion,  pp.  159-173. 

^  Liv.  i,  ch.  22. 

3  Cp.  citations  in  Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  ii,  18,  note  42  (i-vol.  ed.  p.  296) ; 
Lecky,  Rationalism,  i,  92-5  ;  and  Perrens,  Les  Libertins,  p.  44. 

"*  .'\s  to  Henri  IV  see  Perrens,  p.  53. 


FRANCE  19 


work  of  Charron  (i  541-1603),  Montaigne's  friend  and 
disciple.  The  Essais  had  first  appeared  in  1580  ;  the 
expanded  and  revised  issue  in  158S  ;  and  in  160 1  there 
appeared  Charron's  De  la  Sagesse,  which  gives  methodic 
form  and  as  far  as  was  permissible  a  direct  appHcation 
to  Montaigne's  naturalistic  principles.  Charron's  is  a 
curious  case  of  mental  evolution.  First  a  lawyer,  then  a 
priest,  he  became  a  highly  successful  popular  preacher 
and  champion  of  the  Catholic  League  ;  and  as  such  was 
favoured  by  the  notorious  Marguerite  (the  Second')  of 
Navarre.  Becoming  the  friend  of  Montaigne  in  1586,  he 
shows  already  in  1593,  in  his  TJiree  Truths,  the  influence 
of  the  essayist's  skepticism,- though  Charron's  book  was 
expressly  framed  to  refute,  first,  the  atheists  ;  second,  the 
pagans,  Jews,  Mohammedans  ;  and  third,  the  Christian 
heretics  and  schismatics.  The  IVisdom,  published  only 
eight  years  later,  is  a  work  of  a  very  different  cast, 
proving  a  mental  change.  Even  in  the  first  work  "  the 
growing  teeth  of  the  skeptic  are  discernible  beneath  the 
well-worn  stumps  of  the  believer  ";3  but  the  second 
almost  testifies  to  a  new  birth.  Professedly  orthodox, 
it  was  yet  recognised  at  once  by  the  devout  as  a  "  semi- 
nary of  impiety,  "4  and  brought  on  its  author  a  persecu- 
tion that  lasted  till  his  sudden  death  from  apoplexy, 
which  his  critics  pronounced  to  be  a  divine  dispensation. 
In  the  second  and  rearranged  edition,  published  a  year 
after  his  death,  there  are  some  modifications  ;  but  they 
are  so  far  from  essential ^  that  Buckle  found  the  book  as 
it  stands  a  kind  of  pioneer  manual  of  rationalism."     Its 

'  Not,  as  Mr.  Owen  states  {French  Skeptics,  p.  569),  the  sister  of 
P"rancis  I,  who  died  when  Charron  was  eight  years  old,  but  thedaug'hter 
of  Henri  II,  and  first  wife  of  Henri  of  Navarre,  afterwards  Henri  IV. 

^  Cp.  Sainte-Beuve,  as  cited  by  Owen,  p.  571,  note,  and  Owen's  own 
words,  "p.  572.  3  Owen,  p.  571.      Cp.  pp.  573,  574. 

■*  Bayle,  art.  Charron.  "A  brutal  atheism"  is  the  account  ot 
Charron's  doctrine  g'iven  by  the  Jesuit  Garasse.      Cp.  Perrens,  p.  57. 

5  Mr.  Owen  (p.  570)  comes  to  this  conclusion  after  carefully  collating' 
the  editions.  Cp.  p.  587,  note.  The  whole  of  the  alterations,  including 
those  proposed  by  President  Jeannin,  will  be  found  set  forth  in  the 
edition  of  1607,  and  the  reprints  of  that. 

*  "The  first attempt   made   in  a  modern  language  to  construct  a 

system  of  morals  without  the  aid  of  theology"  {Introd.  to  Hist,  of  Civ. 
in  England,  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  19  ;   i-vol.  ed.  p.  296). 


20  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

way  of  putting  all  religions  on  one  level,  as  being  alike 
grounded  on  bad  evidence  and  held  on  prejudice,  is  only 
the  formal  statement  of  an  old  idea,  found,  like  so  many 
others  of  Charron's,  in  Montaigne  ;  but  the  didactic 
purpose  and  method  turn  the  skeptic's  shrug  into  a 
resolute  propaganda.  So  with  the  formal  and  earnest 
insistence  that  true  morality  cannot  be  built  on  religious 
hopes  and  fears — a  principle  which  Charron  was  the  first 
to  bring  directly  home  to  the  modern  intelligence,^  as  he 
did  the  principle  of  development  in  religious  systems. - 
Attempting  as  it  does  to  construct  a  systematic  practical 
philosophy  of  life,  it  puts  aside  so  positively  the  claims 
of  the  theologians, 3  and  so  emphatically  subordinates 
religion  to  the  rule  of  natural  reason, -^  that  it  constitutes 
a  virtual  revolution  in  public  doctrine  for  Christendom. 
As  Montaigne  is  the  effective  beginner  of  modern 
literature,  so  is  Charron  the  beginner  of  modern  secular 
teaching.      He  is  a  Naturalist,  professing  theism. 

It  was  only  powerful  protection  that  could  save  such  a 
book  from  proscription  ;  but  Charron  and  his  book  had 
the  support  at  once  of  Henri  IV  and  the  President 
Jeannin — the  former  a  proved  indifferentist  to  religious 
forms  ;  the  latter  the  author  of  the  remark  that  a  peace 
with  two  religions  was  better  than  a  war  which  had  none. 
Such  a  temper  had  become  predominant  even  among 
professed  Catholics,  as  may  be  gathered  from  the 
immense  popularity  of  the  Satyre  Menippee  (1594). 
Ridiculing  as  it  did  the  insensate  fanaticism  of  the 
Catholic  League,  it  was  naturally  described  as  the  work 
of  atheists  ;  but  there  seems  to  have  been  no  such 
element  in  the  case,  the  authors  being  all  Catholics  of 
good  standing,  and  some  of  them  even  having  a  record 
for  zeal. 5     On  the  other  hand,  it  is  expressly  testified  by 

'  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  5S0-5.  -  Buckle,  ii,  21  ;    i-vol.  ed.  p.  297. 

3  E.g.,  the  preface  to  the  first  edition,  ad  init. 

'■  E.g.,  Liv.  ii,  ch.  28  of  revised  ed.  (ed.  1609,  p.  399). 

5  See  the  biog-.  pref.  of  M.  Labitte  to  the  Charpentier  edition,  p.  xxv. 
The  Satyre  in  its  own  turn  freely  charges  atheism  and  incest  on 
Leaguers  ;  e.g.,  the  Harangue  de  M.  de  Lyon,  ed.  cited,  pp.  78,  86.  This 
was  by  Rapin,  whom  Garasse  particularly  accuses  of  libertinage.  See 
the  Doctrine  Curieuse,  as  cited,  p.   124. 


FRANCE  21 


the  Catholic  historian  De  Thou  that  all  the  rich  and  the 
aristocracy  held  the  Leag-ue  in  abomination.'  In  such 
an  atmosphere  rationalism  must  needs  ^Terminate, 
especially  when  the  king's  acceptance  of  Catholicism 
dramatised  the  unreality  of  the  grounds  of  strife. 

After  the  assassination  of  the  king  in  i6io,  the  last  of 
the  bloody  deeds  which  had  kept  France  on  the  rack  of 
uncertainty  in  religion's  name  for  three  generations,  the 
spirit  of  rationalism  naturally  did  not  wane.  In  the 
Paris  of  the  early  seventeenth  century,  doubtless,  the  new 
emancipation  came  to  be  associated,  as  "  libertinism," 
with  license  as  well  as  with  freethinking.  In  the  nature 
of  the  case  there  could  be  no  serious  and  free  literary 
discussion  of  the  new  problems  either  of  life  or  belief, 
save  in  so  far  as  they  had  been  handled  by  Montaigne 
and  Charron  ;  and,  inasmuch  as  the  accounts  preserved 
of  the  freethought  of  the  age  are  almost  invariably  those 
of  its  worst  enemies,  it  is  chiefly  their  side  of  the  case 
that  has  been  presented.  Thus  in  1623  the  Jesuit  Father 
Francois  Garasse  published  a  thick  quarto  of  over  a 
thousand  pages,  entitled  La  Doctrine  Ciirieuse  des 
Beaux  Esprits  de  ce  temps,  ou  pretendii  tels,  in  which 
he  assails  the  "libertins"  of  the  day  with  an  infuriated 
industry.  The  eight  books  into  which  he  divides  his 
treatise  proceed  upon  eight  alleged  maxims  of  the  free- 
thinkers, which  run  as  follows  : — 

I.  There  are  very  few  good  wits  \bons  Esprits]  in  the  world  ; 
and  the  fools,  that  is  to  sa}-,  the  common  run  of  men,  are  not 
capable  of  our  doctrine  ;  therefore  it  will  not  do  to  speak  freely, 
but  in  secret,  and  among  trusting  and  cabalistic  souls. 

II.  Good  wits  [beaux  Esprits]  believe  in  God  only  by  way  of 
form,  and  as  a  matter  of  public  policy  {par  Maxime  iV Etat). 

III.  A  he!  Esprit  is  free  in  his  belief,  and  is  not  readily  to  be 
taken  in  by  the  quantity  of  nonsense  that  is  propounded  to  the 
siinple  populace. 

IV.  All  things  are  conducted  and  governed  by  Destiny, 
which  is  irrevocable,  infallible,  immovable,  necessary,  eternal, 
and  inevitable  to  all  men  whomsoever. 

V.  It   is  true  that  the  book  called  the   Bible,  or  the  Holy 


'  Cited  by  Buckle. 


22  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Scripture,  is  a  good  book  (iin  gentil  Uvre),  and  contains  a  lot  of 
good  things  ;  but  that  a  hon  esprit  should  be  obliged  to  believe 
under  pain  of  damnation  all  that  is  therein,  down  to  the  tail  of 
Tobit's  dog,  does  not  follow. 

VI.  There  is  no  other  divinity  or  sovereign  power  in  the 
world  but  Nature,  which  must  be  satisfied  in  all  things,  with- 
out refusing  anything  to  our  body  or  senses  that  they  desire  of 
us  in  the  exercise  of  their  natural  powers  and  faculties. 

VII.  Supposing  there  be  a  God,  as  it  is  decorous  to  admit, 
so  as  not  to  be  always  at  odds  with  the  superstitious,  it  does 
not  follow  that  there  are  creatures  which  are  purely  intellectual 
and  separated  from  matter.  All  that  is  in  Nature  is  composite, 
and  therefore  there  are  neither  angels  nor  devils  in  the  world, 
and  it  is  not  certain  that  the  soul  of  man  Is  Immortal. 

VIII.  It  Is  true  that   to   live  happily  It  Is  necessary  to  extin- 
.    guish  and  drown  all   scruples  ;  but  all   the   same  it  does  not  do 

to  appear  impious  and  abandoned,  for  fear  of  offending  the 
simple  or  losing  the  support  of  the  superstitious. 

This  is  obviously  neither  candid'  nor  competent  writing; 
and  as  it  happens  there  remains  proof,  in  the  case  of  the 
life  of  La  Mothe  le  Vayer,  that  "  earnest  freethought 
in  the  beginning  oi  the  seventeenth  century  afforded  a 
point  d^ appiii  {qx  s^x\C)\\s-m\x\^^&  men,  which  neither  the 
corrupt  Romanism  nor  the  narrow  Protestantism  of  the 
period  could  furnish."-  Garasse's  own  doctrine  was 
that  "  the  true  liberty  of  the  mind  consists  in  a  simple 
and  docile  {sage)  belief  in  all  that  the  church  propounds, 
indifferently  and  without  distinction. "^  The  later  social 
history  of  Catholic  France  is  the  sufficient  comment  on 
the  efficacy  of  such  teaching  to  regulate  life.  In  any 
case  the  new  ideas  steadily  gained  ground  ;  and  on  the 
heels  of  the  treatise  of  Garasse  appeared  that  of  Marin 
Mersenne,  Uimpiete  des  Deistes,  Atliees  et  Libertins  de 
ce  temps  combattite,   avec   la   refutation  des  opinions  de 

'  M.  Labitte,  himself  a  Catholic,  speaks  of  Garasse's  "  forfanterie 
habituelle  "  and  '•  ton  d  'insolence  sincere  qui  dt^guise  tant  de  mensonges  " 
(Pref.  cited,  p.  xxxi). 

-  Owen,  French  Skeptics,  p.  659.  Cp.  Lecky,  Rationalism,  i,  97, 
citing:  Maury,  as  to  the  resistance  of  libertins  to  the  superstition  about 
witchcraft. 

3  Doctri)ie  Ciirieuse  des  Beaux  Esprits,  as  cited,  p.  208.  This  is  one  of 
the  passages  which  fully  explain  the  opinion  of  the  orthodox  of  that  ag-e 
that  Garasse  "  helped  rather  than  hindered  atheism  "  (Reimmann,  Hist. 
Atheismi,  1725,  p.  408). 


ENGLAND  23 


Charron,  de  Cardan^  de  Jordan  Bntn,  et  des  quatraines 
du  Deiste  (1624).      In    a    previous    treatise,   Qucestiones 

celehcrrimcB  in    Genesim in   qno   volumine  Athei  et 

Deisti  impiignantur  (1623),  Mersenne  set  agoing-  the 
often-quoted  assertion  that,  while  atheists  abounded 
throughout  Europe,  they  were  so  specially  abundant  in 
France  that  in  Paris  alone  there  were  some  fifty  thousand. 
Even  taking  the  term  "  atheist  "  in  the  loosest  sense  in 
which  such  writers  used  it,  the  statement  was  never 
credited  by  any  contemporary  ;  but  neither  did  anyone 
doubt  that  there  was  an  unprecedented  amount  of 
unbelief.  Such  were  the  signs  of  the  times  when  Pascal 
was  in  his  cradle. 

Mersenne's  statistical  assertion  was  made  in  two  sheets  of 
the  Qiicsstiones  CelehernmiF,  "qui  ont  ete  supprime  dans  la 
plupart  des  exemplaires,  a  cause,  sans  doute,  de  leur  exagg-^ra- 
tion  "  (Bouillier,  Hist,  dela philos.  cartesienne,  1854,  i,  28,  where 
the  passage  is  cited).  The  suppressed  sheets  included  a  list  of 
the  "atheists"  of  the  time,  occupying  five  folio  columns. 
Julian  Hibbert,  Plutarchus  and  Theophrastus  on  Superstition, 
etc.,  1828;  App.  Catal.  of  Works  written  against  Atheism,  p.  3  ; 
Prosper  Marchand,  Lettresurle  Cynihahini  Mnndi,  in  ed.  Biblio- 
phile Jacob,  1841,  p.  17,  note. 

§  3.   England. 

While  France  was  thus  passing  from  general  fanati- 
cism to  a  large  measure  of  freethought,  England  was 
passing  by  a  less  tempestuous  path  to  a  hardly  less 
advanced  stage  of  opinion.  The  comparative  bloodless- 
ness  of  the  strife  between  Protestant  and  Catholic  under 
Mary  and  Elizabeth,  the  treatment  of  the  Jesuit  propa- 
ganda under  the  latter  queen  as  a  political  rather  than  a 
doctrinal  question,  prevented  any  such  vehemence  of 
recoil  from  religious  ideals  as  took  place  in  France. 

Unbelief,  as  we  have  seen,  however,  there  certainly 
was  ;  and  it  is  recorded  that  Walter,  Earl  of  Essex,  on 
his  deathbed  at  Dublin  in  1576,  murmured  that  among 
his  countrymen  neither  Popery  nor  Protestantism  pre- 
vailed :    "  there  was    nothing  but    infidelity,    infidelity, 


24  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

infidelity  ;  atheism,  atheism  ;  no  reliijion,  no  religion."' 
And  when  we  turn  aside  from  the  beaten  paths  of  Eliza- 
bethan literature  we  see  clearly  what  is  partly  visible 
from  those  paths — a  number  of  freethinking  variations 
from  the  norm  of  faith.  Ascham,  as  we  saw,  found 
some  semblance  of  atheism  shockingly  common  among 
the  travelled  upper  class  of  his  day;  and  the  testimonies 
continue.  Lyly,  in  his  Euphues  (1579),  referring  to 
England  in  general  or  Oxford  in  particular  as  Athens, 
asks  :  "  Be  there  not  many  in  Athens  which  think  there 
is  no  God,  no  redemption,  no  resurrection?"  Further, 
he  complains  that  "  it  was  openly  reported  of  an  old 
man  in  iMaples  that  there  was  more  lightness  in  Athens 

than  in  all    Italy more   Papists,  xwoxo.  Atheists^  more 

sects,  more  schisms,  than  in  all  the  monarchies  in  the 
world";-  and  he  proceeds  to  frame  an  absurd  dialogue 
of  "  Euphues  and  Atheos,"  in  which  the  latter,  "mon- 
strous, yet  tractable  to  be  persuaded, "^  is  converted  with 
a  burlesque  facility.  Lyly,  a  commonplace  pietist,  is  a 
poor  witness  as  to  the  atheistic  arguments  current,  but 
those  he  cites  are  so  much  better  than  his  own,  up  to  the 
point  of  terrified  collapse  on  the  atheist's  part,  that  he 
had  doubtless  heard  them.  The  'atheist  speaks  as  a 
pantheist,  identifying  deity  with  the  universe  ;  and 
readily  meets  a  simple  appeal  to  Scripture  with  the 
reply  that  "  whosoever  denieth  a  godhead  denieth  also 
the  Scriptures  which  testifie  of  him."'^  Evidently, 
then,  such  opinions  were  in  some  vogue,  else  they  had 
not  been  handled  in  a  book  so  essentially  planned  for 
the  general  reader.  But  however  firmly  held,  they 
could  not  be  published  ;  and  fourteen  years  later,  over 
thirty  years  after  the  outburst  of  Ascham,  we  still  find 
only  a  sporadic  and  unwritten  freethought,  however 
abundant,  going  at  times  in  fear  of  its  life. 

V^  Froude,  History  of  England,  ed.  1875,  ^''  '99'  citing  MSS.  Ireland. 

'  Euphues:  The  Anatomy  of  Wit,  Arber's  reprint,  pp.  140,  153.  That 
the  reference  was  mainly  to  Oxford  is  to  be  inferred  from  the  address 
"To  my  verie  g-ood  friends  the  Gentlemen  Schollers  of  Oxford,  '  pre- 
fixed to  the  ed.  of  1581.     Id,  p.  207. 

3  Id.  p.  158.  ■»  Id.  pp.  161,  166. 


ENGLAND 


25 


Private  discussion,  indeed,  tliere   must  have  been,  if 
there  be  any  truth  in  Bacon's  phrase  that  "  atheists  will 

ever  be  talking  of  that  opinion,  as  if  they would  be 

glad  to  be  strengthened  by  the  consent  of  others  "' — an 
argument  which  would  make  short  work  of  the  vast 
literature  of  apologetic  theism — but  even  private  talk 
had  need  be  cautious,  and  there  could  be  no  publication 
of  atheistic  opinions.  Printed  rationalism  could  ^o  no 
further  than  such  a  protest  against  superstition  as 
Reginald  Scot's  Discoverie  of  Witclicraft  (1584),  which, 
however,  is  a  sufficiently  remarkable  expression  of 
reason  in  an  age  in  which  a  Bodin  held  angrily  by  the 
delusion.-  Elizabeth  was  herself  substantially  irre- 
ligious,-^ and  preferred  to  keep  the  clergy  few  in  number 
and  subordinate  in  influence  ;^  but  her  Ministers 
regarded  the  church  as  part  of  the  State  system,  and 
punished  all  open  or  at  least  aggressive  heresy  in  the 
manner  of  the  Inquisition.  A  sect  called  the  "  Family 
of  Love,"  deriving  from  Holland  (already  "a  country 
fruitfull  of  heretics"), 5  went  so  far  as  to  hold  that 
"Christ  doth  not  signify  any  one  person,  but  a  quality 
whereof  many  are  partakers  " — a  doctrine  which  we 
have  seen  ascribed  by  Calvin  to  the  liberiiiis  of 
Geneva  a   generation  before  ;°    but   it  does    not  appear 


'  Essay  Of  Atheism. 

^  Lecky,  Ratio)ialis)n,  i,  103-4.  Scot's  book  (now  made  accessible  by 
a  reprint,  r886)  had  practically  no  influence  in  his  own  day  ;  and  Kingf 
James,  who  wrote  ag-ainst  it,  caused  it  to  be  burned  by  the  hangfman  in 
the  next.  Scot  inserts  the  "  intidelitie  of  atheists  "  in  the  list  of  intel- 
lectual evils  on  his  title-page ;  but  save  for  an  allusion  to  "■  the 
abhomination  of  idolatrie  "  all  the  others  indicted  are  aspects  of  the 
black  art. 

3  "  No  woman  ever  lived  who  was  so  totally  destitute  of  the  sentiment 
of  religion  "  (Green,  Short  History ,  ch.  vii,  §  3,  p.  369). 

•*  Cp.  Soames,  Elizabethan  Religious  History ,  1S39,  p.  225.  Yet  when 
Morris,  the  attorney  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  introduced  in  Parlia- 
ment a  Bill  to  restrain  the  power  of  the  ecclesiastical  courts,  she  had 
him  dismissed  and  imprisoned  for  life,  being-  determined  that  the  control 
should  remain  in  her  own  hands.  Heylyn,  Hist,  of  the  Ref  ed.  1849, 
pref.  vol.  i,  pp.  xiv-xv. 

5  Camden,  Annals  of  Elizabeth,  sub.  ann.  1580;  3rd  ed.  1635,  p.  218. 

'^  Hooker,  Pref.  to  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  ch.  iii,  g  9,  ed.  1850.  Camden 
(p.  219)  states  that  the  Dutch  teacher  Henry  Nichalai,  whose  works  were 
translated  for  the  sect,  "  gave  out  that  he  did  partake  of  God,  and  God 
of  his  humanity." 


26  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

that  they  were  persecuted/  Some  isolated  propagan- 
dists, however,  paid  the  last  penalty.  One  Matthew 
Hamont  or  Hamond,  a  ploughwright,  of  Hetherset, 
was  in  1579  tried  by  the  Bishop  and  Consistory  of 
Norwich  "  for  that  he  denyed  Christe,"  and,  being  found 
guilty,  was  burned,  after  having  had  his  ears  cut  off 
"  because  he  spake  wordes  of  blasphemie  against  the 
Oueen's  Maiistie  and  others  of  her  Counsell."^  The 
victim  would  thus  seem  to  have  been  given  to  violence 
of  speech  ;  but  the  record  o'f  his  negations,  which  suggest 
developments  from  the  Anabaptist  movement,  is  none 
the  less  notable.      In  Stow's  wording, ^  they  run  : — 

"That  the  newe  Testament  and  Gospell  of  Christe  are  but 
mere  foolishnesse,  a  storie  of  menne,  or  rather  a  mere  fable. 

"  Item,  that  man  is  restored  to  e^race  by  the  meere  mercy 
of  God,  wythout  tlie  meane  of  Christ's  bloud,  death,  and 
passion. 

"  Item,  that  Christe  is  not  God,  nor  the  Saviour  of  the  world, 
but  a  meere  man,  a  sinfull  man,  and  an  abiiominable  IdoU. 

"  Item,  that  al  they  that  worshippe  him  are  abhominable 
Idolaters  ;  And  that  Christe  did  not  rise  agayne  from  death  to 
life  by  the  power  of  his  Godhead,  neither,  that  bee  did  ascende 
into  Heaven. 

"  Item,  that  the  holy  Ghoste  is  not  God,  neither,  that  there 
is  any  suche  holy  Ghoste. 

"  Item,  that  Baptisme  is  not  necessarie  in  the  Churche  of 
God,  neither  the  use  of  the  sacrament  of  the  body  and  bloude 
of  Christ." 

There  is  trace  of  a  freethinker  named  Lewis,  who  appears 
to  have  been  burned  at  the  same  place  in  the  same  year."^ 
Further  one  Peter  Cole,  an  Ipswich  tanner,  was  burned 
in  1587  (also  at  Norwich)  for  similar  doctrine  ;  and 
Francis  Kett,  a  young  clergyman,  ex-fellow  of  Corpus 
Christi   College,   Cambridge,   was   burned  at  the  same 

'  See  above,  i,  474,  as  to  a  much  more  pronounced  heresy  in  1549, 
which  also  seems  to  have  escaped  punishment.  Camden  tells  that  the 
books  of  the  ''  Family  of  Love  "  were  burnt  in  1580,  but  mentions  no 
other  penalties. 

-  May  13th,  1579.     The  burning-  was  on  the  20th. 

3  Stow's  Chronicle^  1580,  pp.  1 194-5. 

''  David's  Evidence,  by  William  Burton,  Preacher  of  Reading,  1592  (?), 
p.  125. 


ENGLAND  27 


place  in  1589  for  heresy  of  the  Unitarian  order." 
Hamond  and  Cole  seem,  however,  to  have  been  in  their 
own  way  religious  men,'  and  Kett  a  devout  mystic,  with 
ideas  of  a  Second  Advent.^     All  founded  on  the  Bible. 

Most  surprising-  of  all  perhaps  is  the  record  of  the  trial  of 
one  John  Hilton,  clerk  in  holy  orders,  before  the  Upper  House 
of  Convocation  on  December  22nd,  1584,  on  the  charge  of 
having-  "said  in  a  sermon  at  St.  Martin's-in-the-Fields  that  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments  are  but  fables."  (Lansdowne  MSS. 
British  Museum,  No.  982,  fol.  46,  cited  by  Professor  Storojenko, 
Life  of  Robert  Greene,  Eng.  trans,  in  Grosart's  "Huth  Library  " 
ed.  of  Greene's  Works,  i,  39,  note.)  As  Hilton  confessed  to  the 
charge  and  made  abjuration,  it  may  be  surmised  that  he  had 
spoken  under  the  influence  of  liquor.  Even  on  that  view,  how- 
ever, such  an  episode  tells  of  a  considerable  currency  of  un- 
believing criticism. 

Apart  from  constructive  heresy,  the  perpetual 
religious  dissensions  of  the  time  were  sure  to  stimulate 
doubt  ;  and  there  appeared  quite  a  number  of  treatises 
directed  wholly  or  partly  against  explicit  unbelief,  as  : 
"The  Faith  of  the  Church  Militant,"  translated  from  the 
Latin  of  the  Danish  divine  Hemming  (1581),  and 
addressed  "  to  the  confutation  of  the  Jewes,  Turks, 
Atheists,  Papists,  Hereticks,  and  all  other  adversaries 
of  the  truth  whatsoever";    "The  Touchstone  of  True 

Religion against  the  impietie  of  Atheists,  Epicures, 

Libertines,  Hippocrites,  and  Temporisours  of  these 
times"  (1590);  "  An  Enemie  to  Atheisme,"  translated 
by  T.  Rogers  from  the  Latin  of  Avenar  (1591)  ;  Henry 
Smith's  "God's  Arrow  against  Atheists"  (1593);  an 
English  translation  of  the  second  volume  of  La 
Primaudaye's  L' Academie  Frangaise,  containing  a 
refutation  of  atheistic  doctrine  ;  and  no  fewer  than  three 
"Treatises  of  the  Nature  of  God" — two  anonymous, 
the  third  by  Bishop  Thomas  Morton — all  appearing  in 
the  year  1599. 

All  this  smoke  implies  some  fire;  and   the   translator 

'  Burton,  as  cited. 

=  Art.  Matthew  Hamond,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 

3  Art.  Francis  Kett,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 


28  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

of  La  Primaudaye,  one  "  T.  B.,"  declares  in  his  dedica- 
tion that  there  has  been  a  general  growth  of  atheism  in 
England  and  on  the  continent,  which  he  traces  to  "  that 
Monster  Machiavell."  Among  English  atheists  of  that 
school  he  ranks  the  dramatist  Robert  Greene,  who  had 
died  in  1592  ;  and  it  has  been  argued,  not  quite  convinc- 
ingly, that  it  was  to  Machiavelli  that  Greene  had  pointed, 
in  his  death-bed  recantation  A  Groatstvort/i  of  Wit 
(1592),  as  the  atheistic  instructor  of  his  friend  Marlowe,^ 
who  introduces  "  Machiavel  "  as  cynical  prologist  to  his 
Jew  of  Malta.  Greene's  own  "  atheism  "  had  been  for 
the  most  part  a  matter  of  bluster  and  disorderly  living  ; 
and  we  find  his  friend  Thomas  Nash,  in  his  Strange 
]Ve%i)s  (1592),  calling  the  Puritan  zealot  who  used  the 
pseudonym  of  Martin  Marprelate  "  a  mighty  platformer 
of  atheism  ";  even  as  his  own  and  Greene's  enemy, 
Gabriel  Harvey,  called  Nash  an  atheist.'  But  Nash  in 
his  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem  (1592),  though  he 
speaks  of  the  "atheistical  Julian,"  discusses  contem- 
porary atheism  in  a  fashion  descriptive  of  an  actual 
growth  of  the  opinion,  concerning  which  he  alleges  that 
there  is  no  "sect  now  in  England  so  scattered  \i.e.^  so 
widely  spread]  as  atheisme."  The  "outward  atheist," 
he  declares,  "establishes  reason  as  his  God";  and  he 
offers  some  sufficiently  primitive  arguments  by  way  of 
confutation. 3  There  had  arisen,  in  short,  a  ferment  of 
rationalism  which  w^as  henceforth  never  to  disappear 
from  English  life. 

In  1593,  indeed,  we  find  atheism  formally  charged 
against  two  famous  men,  Christopher  Marlowe 
and    Sir    Walter    Raleigh,    of    whom    the    first    is 


'  Professor  Storojenko,  Life  of  Greene ,  Engf.  trans,  in  Grosart's  "  Huth 
Library"  ed.  of  Greene's  Works,  i,  42-50.  It  is  quite  clear  that 
!\Ialone  and  the  critics  who  have  followed  him  were  wrongf  in  suppos- 
ing the  unnamed  instructor  to  be  Francis  Kett,  who  was  a  devout  Uni- 
tarian. Professor  Storojenko  speaks  of  Kelt  as  having-  been  made  an 
Arian  at  Norwich,  after  his  return  there  in  1585,  by  the  influence  of 
Lewes  and  Haworth.      Query  Haniond  ? 

-  In  Pierce's  Supererogation,  Collier's  ed.  p.  85,  cited  by  Storojenko. 

3  Rep.  of  Nash's  Works  in  Grosart's  '*  Huth  Library  "  ed.  vol.  iv,  pp. 
172,  173,  17S,  1S2,  183. 


ENGLAND 


29 


documentarily  connected  with  Kett,  and  the  second  in 
turn  with  Marlowe.  An  official  document,' preserved  by 
some  chance,  reveals  that  Marlowe  was  given — whether 
or  not  over  the  wine-cup — ^to  singularly  audacious 
derision  of  the  received  beliefs  ;  and  so  explicit  is  the 
evidence  that  it  is  nearly  certain  he  would  have  been 
executed  for  blasphemy  had  he  not  been  privately  killed 
(1593)  while  the  proceedings  were  pending.  The 
"atheism"  imputed  to  him  is  not  made  out  in  any 
detail  ;  but  many  of  the  other  utterances  are  notably  in 
keeping  with  Marlowe's  daring  temper ;  and  thev 
amount  to  unbelief  of  a  stringent  kind.  In  Doctor 
Faiistus-  he  makes    Mephistopheles  affirm   that   "  Hell  \ 

hath  no  limits but  where  we  are  is  hell" — a  doctrine  1 

which  we  have  seen  to  be  current  before  his  time  ;  and-J 
in  his  private  talk  he  had  gone  much  further.  Not  only 
did  he  question,  with  Raleigh,  the  Biblical  chronology  : 
he  affirmed  "  that  Moyses  was  but  a  juggler,  and  that 
one  Heriots  "  [z".^., Thomas  Harriot,  the  astronomer,  one 
of  Raleigh's  circle]  "  can  do  more  than  he  ";  and  con- 
cerning Jesus  he  used  language  incomparably  more 
offensive  to  orthodox  feeling  than  that  of  Hamond  and 
Kett.  There  is  more  in  all  this  than  a  mere  assimilation 
of  Machiavelli  ;  though  the  further  saying  "  that  the 
first  beginning  of  religion  was  only  to  keep  men  in  awe" 
• — put  also  by  Greene,  with  much  force  of  versification, 
in  the  mouth  of  a  villain-hero  in  the  play  of  Selimus^^^ 
tells  of  that  influence.  Marlowe  was  indeed  not  the  man 
to  swear  by  any  master  without  adding  something  of  his 
own.  Atheism,  however,  is  not  inferrible  from  any  of 
his  works  :  on  the  contrary,  in  the  second  part  of  his 
famous  first  play  he  makes  his  hero,  described  by  the 
repentant  Greene  as  the  "atheist  Tamburlaine,"  declaim 


'  MS.  Harl.  6853,  fol.  320.  It  is  given  in  full  in  the  appendix  to  the 
first  issue  of  the  selected  plays  of  Marlowe  in  the  Mermaid  Series,  edited 
by  Mr.  Havelock  Ellis  ;  and,  with  omissions,  in  the  editions  of  Cunning- 
ham, Dyce,  and  Bullen.  ^  Act  II,  sc.  i. 

3  Grosart's  ed.  in  "Temple  Dramatists"  series,  11.  246-371.  There  is 
plenty  of  "  irreligion"  in  the  passage,  but  not  atheism,  though  there  is  a 
denial  of  a  future  state  (365-70). 


30  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


of  deity  with  signal  eloquence,  though  with  a  pantheistic 
cast  of  phrase.  In  another  passage,  a  Moslem  per- 
sonage claims  to  be  on  the  side  of  a  Christ  who 
would  punish  perjury  ;  and  in  yet  another  the  hero  is 
made  to  trample  under  foot  the  pretensions  of  Moham- 
med.' It  was  probably  his  imputation  of  perjury  to 
Christian  rulers  in  particular  that  earned  for  Marlowe 
the  malignant  resentment  which  inspired  the  various 
edifying  comments  published  after  his  unedifying  death. 
Had  he  not  perished  as  he  did  in  a  tavern  brawl,  he 
might  have  had  the  nobler  fate  of  a  martyr. 

Concerning  Raleigh,  again,  there  is  no  shadow  of 
proof  of  atheism,  though  his  circle,  which  included  the 
Earls  of  Northumberland  and  Oxford,  was  called  a 
"  school  of  atheism  "  in  a  Latin  pamphlet  by  the  Jesuit 
Parsons, ""  published  at  Rome  in  1593  ;  and  at  his  trial 
he  was  called  an  atheist  by  the  Chief  Justice,  and  his 
friend  Harriot  a  "devil. "3  It  is  matter  of  literary  history, 
however,  that  he,  like  Montaigne,  had  been  influenced 
by  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus  Empiricus  ;^  his  short 
essay  Tlie  Sceptick  being  a  naif  exposition  of  the  thesis 
that  "  the  sceptick  doth  neither  affirm  neither  deny  any 
position  ;  but  doubteth  of  it,  and  applyeth  his  Reason 
against  that  which  is  affirmed,  or  denied,  to  justifie  his 
non-consenting.  "5  The  essay  itself,  nevertheless,  pro- 
ceeds upon  a  set  of  wildly  false  propositions  in  natural 
history,  concerning  which  the  adventurous  reasoner  has 
no  doubts  whatever  ;  and  altogether  we  may  be  sure 
that  his  artificial  skepticism  did  not  carry  him  far  in 
philosophy.  In  Discovery  of  Guiana  (1600)  he  declares 
that  he  is  "  resolved  "  of  the  truth  of  the  stories  of  men 
whose  heads  grow  beneath  their  shoulders.  In  other 
directions,  however,  he  was  less  credulous.  In  his 
History    of   the    World  (1603-16)    he    pointed    out,    as 

'    Taiiibuilaiiie,  Part  II,  Acts  II,  sc.  ii,  iii  ;   V,  sc.  i. 
-  Writing  as  Andrew  Philopater.     See  Bicf.  of  A'aL  Biog.,  art.  Robert 
Parsons,  and  Storojenko,  as  cited,  i,  36,  and  nofe. 

3  Edwards,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  1S68,  i,  432,  436. 
■*  Translated  into  Latin  by  Henri  Estienne  in  1562. 
5  Re>?iaiiisofSir  Walter  Raleigh,  ed.  1657,  p.  123. 


ENGLAND  31 


Marlowe  had  done  in  talk,  how  incompatible  was  such 
a  phenomenon  as  the  mature  civilisation  of  ancient 
Egypt  in  the  days  of  Abraham  with  the  orthodox 
chronology.'  This,  indeed,  was  heresy  enough,  then 
and  later,  seeing  that  not  only  did  Bishop  Pearson,  in 
1659,  in  a  work  on  The  Creed  which  has  been  circulated 
down  to  the  nineteenth  century,  indignantly  denounce 
ail  who  departed  from  the  figures  in  the  margin  of  the 
Bible  ;  but  Coleridge,  a  century  and  a  half  later,  took 
the  very  instance  of  Egyptian  history  as  triumphantly 
establishing  the  accuracy  of  the  Bible  record  against  the 
French  atheists.^  As  regards  Raleigh's  philosophy,  the 
evidence  goes  to  show  only  that  he  was  ready  to  read  a 
Unitarian  essay,  presumably  that  already  mentioned, 
supposed  to  be  Kett's  ;  and  that  he  had  intercourse  with 
Marlowe  andothers(inparticular  his  secretary,  Harriott) 
known  to  be  freethinkers.  A  prosecution  begun  against 
him  on  this  score,  at  the  time  of  the  inquiry  concerning 
Marlowe  (when  Raleigh  was  in  disgrace  with  the  Queen), 
came  to  nothing.  It  had  been  led  up  to  by  a  transla- 
tion of  Parsons'  pamphlet,  which  affirmed  that  his 
private  group  was  known  as  "  Sir  Walter  Rawley's 
school  of  Atheisme,"  and  that  therein  "  both  Moyses  and 
our  Savior,  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments,  are  jested 
at,  and  the  scholars  taught  among  other  things  to  spell 
God  backwards."^  This  seems  to  have  been  idle  gossip, 
though  it  tells  of  unbelief  somewhere  ;  and  Raleigh's 
own  writings  always  indicate^  belief  in  the  Bible  ; 
though  his  dying  speech  and  epitaph  are  noticeably 
deistic.  That  he  was  a  deist,  given  to  free  discussion, 
seems  the  probable  truth. ^ 

'   B.  II,  ch.  i,  sec.  7.  ^  Essay  on  the  Prometheus. 

j^3  Art.  Raleigh,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  xlvii,  192. 

*  Id.  pp.  200-1. 

s  It  is  asserted  by  Francis  Osborn,  who  had  known   Raleigh,  that  he     1 
g-ot  his  title  of  ^//it'/i-/ from  Queen  EHzabeth.     See   the   preface  {Author     ' 
to  Reader)  to   Osborn's  Miscellany  of  Sundry  Essays,  etc.,  in   7th  ed.  of 
his   Works,  1673.     As  to  atheism  at   Elizabeth's  court,  see  Taj-lor,  Retro- 
spect of  Relig.  Life  of  England,  2nd   ed.  p.    198,  and   ref.      Lyly  makes 
one  of  his  characters  write  of  the  ladies  at  court   that   •'  they  never  jar  ^ 
about  matters  of  religion,  because  the}^  never  mean  to  reason  of  them" 
{EupJiues,  Arber's  ed.  p.  194). 


2  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

The  latest  documentary  evidence  as  to  the  case  of  Marlowe 
is  produced  by  Mr.  F.  S.  Boas  in  his  article,  "  New  Light  on 
Marlowe  and  Kyd,"  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  February,  1899, 
reproduced  in  his  edition  of  the  works  of  Thomas  Kyd  (Clarendon 
Press,  1901).  In  addition  to  the  formerly  known  data  as  to 
Marlowe's  "  atheism,"  it  is  now  established  that  Thomas  Kyd, 
his  fellow-dramatist,  was  arrested  on  the  same  charge,  and 
that  thei'e  was  found  among  his  papers  one  containing  "vile 
hereticall  conceiptes  denyinge  the  divinity  of  Jhesus  Christe 
our  Saviour."  This  Kyd  declared  he  had  had  from  Marlowe, 
denying  all  sympathy  with  its  views.  Nevertheless,  he  was 
put  to  the  torture.  The-  paper,  however,  proves  to  be  a 
vehement  Unitarian  argument  on  Scriptural  grounds,  and  is 
much  more  likely  to  have  been  written  by  Francis  Kett  than  by 
Marlowe.  In  the  MSS.  now  brought  to  light,  one  Cholmeley, 
who  "confessed  that  he  was  persuaded  by  Marlowe's  reasons 
to  become  an  Atheiste,"  is  represented  by  a  spy  as  speaking 
"all  evil  of  the  Counsell,  saying  that  they  are  all  Athelstes 
and  Machiavillians,  especially  my  Lord  Admirall."  The  same 
"  atheist,"  who  imputes  atheism  to  others  as  a  vice,  is  described 
as  regretting  he  had  not  killed  the  Lord  Treasurer,  "  sayenge 
)/'  that  he  could  never  have  done  God  better  service." 

For  the  rest,  the  same  spy  tells  that  Cholmeley  believed 
Marlowe  was  "  able  to  shewe  more  sound  reasons  for  Atheisme 
than  any  devine  in  Englande  is  able  to  geve  to  prove  devinitie, 
and  that  Marloe  told  him  that  he  hath  read  the  Atheist  lecture 
to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  and  others."  On  the  last  point  there 
is  no  further  evidence,  save  that  Sir  Walter,  his  dependant 
Thomas  Harriott,  and  Mr.  Carewe  Rawley,  were  on  March  21st, 
1593-4,  charged  upon  sworn  testimonies  with  holding  "  impious 
opinions  concerning  God  and  Providence."  Harriott  had  pub- 
lished in  1588  a  work  on  his  travels  in  Virginia,  at  the  close  of 
which  is  a  passage  in  the  devoutest  vein  telling  of  his  missionary 
labours  (quoted  by  Mr.  Boas,  art.  cited,  p.  225).  Yet  by  1592 
he  had,  with  his  master,  a  reputation  for  atheism  ;  and  that  it 
was  not  wholly  on  the  strength  of  his  great  scientific  know- 
ledge is  suggested  by  the  statement  of  Anthony  a  Wood  that 
he  "made  a  philosophical  theology,  wherein  he  cast  off  the 
Old  Testament." 

Of  this  no  trace  remains  ;  but  it  is  established  that  he  was 
a  highly  accomplished  mathematician,  much  admired  by 
Kepler  ;  and  that  he  "  applied  the  telescope  to  celestial  purposes 
almost  simultaneously  with  Galileo  "  (art.  Harriott  In  Diet,  of 

Nat.  Biog.).      "Harriott was    the  first  who   dared    to    say 

A  =  B  in   the  form  A — B  =  0,   one   of   the  greatest   sources    of 
progress  ever  opened  in  algebra  "  (Professor  A.  De   Morgan, 


ENGLAND 


ZZ 


Neivton,  his  Friend  and  his  Niece,  1885,  p.  91).  Further,  he 
improved  algebraic  notation  by  the  use  of  small  italic  letters  in 
place  of  Roman  capitals,  and  struck  out  the  hypothesis  of 
secondary  planets  as  well  as  of  stars  invisible  from  their  size 
and  distance.  "  He  was  the  first  to  verify  the  results  of  Galileo." 
Rev.  Baden  Powell,  Hist,  of  Nat.  Philos.  1834,  pp.  126,  168. 
Cp.  Rigaud,  as  cited  by  Powell  ;  Ellis's  notes  on  Bacon,  in 
Routledge's  i-vol.  ed.  1905,  pp.  674-6  ;  and  Storojenko,  as 
above  cited,  p.  38,  note. 

The  frequency  of  such  traces  of  rationalism  at  this 
period  is  to  be  understood  in  the  light  of  the  financial 
and  other  scandals  of  the  Reformation  ;  the  bitter  strifes 
of  church  and  dissent ;  and  the  horrors  of  the  wars  of 
religion  in  France,  concerning  which  Bacon  remarks  in 
his  essay  Of  Unity  in  Religion  that  the  spectacle  would 
have  made  Lucretius  "  seven  times  more  Epicure  and 
atheist  than  he  was."  The  proceedings  against  Raleigh 
and  Kyd,  accordingly,  did  not  check  the  spread  or  the 
private  avowal  of  unbelief.  A  few  years  later  we  find 
Hooker,  in  the  Fifth  Book  of  his  Ecclesiastical  Polity 
(1597),  bitterly  avowing  that  the  unbelievers  in  the 
higher  tenets  of  religion  are  much  strengthened  by  the 
strifes  of  believers;'  and  a  dozen  years  earlier  Bishop 
Pilkington  tells  of  "  young  whelps  "  who  "  in  corners 
make  themselves  merry  with  railing  and  scoffing  at  the 
holy  scriptures.  "- 

From  Hooker's  account  it  is  clear  that,  at  least  with 
comparatively  patient  clerics  like  himself,  the  free- 
thinkers would  at  times  deliberately  press  the  question 
of  theism,  and  avow  the  conviction  that  belief  in  God 
was  "  a  kind  of  harmless  error,  bred  and  confirmed  by 
the  sleights  of  wiser  men."  He  further  notes  with  even 
greater  bitterness  that  some — -an  "  execrable  crew  " — who 
were  themselves  unbelievers,  would  in  the  old  pagan 
manner  argue  for  the  fostering  of  religion  as  a  matter  of 
State  policy,  herein  conning  the  lesson  of  Machiavelli. 
For  his  own  part  Hooker  was  confessedly  ill-prepared  to 

'  B.  v,  ch.  ii,  §§  1-4.       Works,  ed.  1850,  i,  432-6. 

=  Exposition  upon  Neliemiah  (1585)  in    Parker   Society's  ed.  of  Works, 
1842,  p.  401. 

VOL.  II  D 


34  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

debate  with  the  atheists,  and  his  attitude  was  not  fitted 
to    shake    their    opinions.      His    one    resource    is    the 
inevitable  plea  that   atheists   are  such   for   the    sake  of 
throwing  off  all  moral  restraint' — a  theorem  which  could 
hardly  be  taken  seriously  by  those  who  knew  the  history 
of  the  English  and  French  aristocracies,  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  for  the    past   hundred    years.      Hooker's  own 
measure  of  rationalism,  though  remarkable  as  compared 
with    previous    orthodoxy,    went    no    further   than    the 
application  of  the  argument  of  Pecock  that  reason  must 
guide  and  control  all  resort  to  Scripture  and  authority  ;^ 
and  he  came  to  it  under  stress  of  dispute,  as  a  principle 
of    accommodation    for   warring    believers,    not   as    an 
expression    of  any    independent   skepticism.     The    un- 
believers of  his  day  were  for  him   a  frightful  portent, 
menacing  all  his  plans  of  orthodox  toleration  ;  and  he 
would  have  had  them  put  down  by  force — a  course  which 
in    some    cases,    as    we    have    seen,   had    been    actually 
taken,  and  was  always  apt  to  be  resorted  to  in  that  age. 
But  orthodoxy  all  the  while  had  a  sure  support  in  the 
social  and   political  conditions  which  made  impossible 
the    publication    of    rationalistic   opinions.      While    the 
whole  machinery  of  public  doctrine  remained  in  religious 
hands  or  under  ecclesiastical  control,  the  mass  of  men  of 
all  grades  inevitably  held  by  the  traditional  faith.     What 
is  remarkable  is  the  amount  of  unbelief,  either  privately 
explicit  or  implicit  in  the  higher  literature,  of  which  we 
have  trace. 

Above  all  there  remains  the  great  illustration  of  the 
rationalistic  spirit  of  the  English  literary  renascence  of 
the  sixteenth  century — the  drama  of  Shakespeare.  Of 
that  it  may  confidently  be  said  that  every  attempt  to  find 
for  it  a  religious  foundation  has  failed. ^  A  clerical 
historian    sums  up  concerning    Shakespeare   that  "the 

'    Works,  i,  432  ;   ii,  762-3. 

-  Ecdes.  Pol.  B.  i,  ch.  7  ;  B.  ii,  ch.  i,  7  ;  B.  iii,  ch.  8  ;  B.  v,  ch.  8  ; 
B.  vii,  ch.  II  ;  B.  viii,  §  6  (  Works,  i,  165,  231,  300,446  ;  ii,  388,  537).  See 
the  citations  in  Buckle,  3-vol.  ed.  iii,  341-2;    i-vol.  ed.  pp.  193-4- 

3  Some  typical  attempts  of  the  kind  are  discussed  in  the  author's  two 
lectures  on  The  Religion  of  Shakespeare,  1887  (South  Place  Institute). 


ENGLAND 


35 


religious  phrases  which  are  thinly  scattered  over  his 
work  are  little  more  than  expressions  of  a  distant  and 
imaginative  reverence.     And  on  the  deeper  grounds  of 

religious  faith  his  silence  is  significant The  riddle  of 

life  and  death he  leaves a  riddle  to  the  last,  with- 
out heeding  the  common  theological  solutions  around 
him."'  The  practical  wisdom  in  which  he  rose  above 
his  rivals,  no  less  than  in  dramatic  and  poetic  genius, 
kept  him  prudently  reticent  on  his  opinions,  as  it  set 
him  upon  building  his  worldly  fortunes  while  the  others 
with  hardly  an  exception  lived  in  shallows  and  miseries. 
As  so  often  happens,  it  was  among  the  ill-balanced 
types  that  there  was  found  the  heedless  courage  to  cry 
aloud  what  others  thought ;  but  Shakespeare's  significant 
silence  reminds  us  that  the  largest  spirits  of  all  could 
live  in  disregard  of  contemporary  creeds.  For,  while 
there  is  no  record  of  his  having  privately  avowed 
unbelief,  much  less  any  explicit  utterance  of  it  in  his 
plays,  in  no  genuine  work  of  his  is  there  any  conformity 
to  current  habits  of  religious  speech.  In  Measure  for 
Measure  the  Duke,  counselling  as  a  friar  the  condemned 
Claudio,  discusses  the  ultimate  issues  of  life  and  death 
without  a  hint  of  Christian  credence. 

So  silent  is  the  dramatist  on  the  ecclesiastical  issues  of 
his  day  that  Protestants  and  Catholics  are  enabled  to  go 
on  indefinitely  claiming  him  as  theirs;  the  latter  dwelling 
on  his  generally  kindly  treatment  of  friars  ;  the  former 
citing  the  fact  that  some  Protestant  preacher — evidently 
a  protege  of  his  daughter  Susannah — was  allowed  lodg- 
ing at  his  house.  But  the  preacher  was  not  hospitably 
treated;''  and  other  clues  fail.  There  is  good  reason  to 
think  that  Shakespeare  was  much  influenced  by  Mon- 
taigne's Essays,  read  by  him  in  Florio's  translation, 
which  was  issued  when  he  was  recasting  the  old 
Hamlet;  and  his  whole  treatment  of  life  in  the  great 
tragedies  and  serious  comedies  produced  by  him  from 

'  Green,  Short  History,  ch.  vii,  §  vii,  end.     Compare  Ruskin's  Sesame 
and  Lilies,  Lect.  Ill,  §  115. 

^  The  record  is  that  the  town  paid  for  his  bread  and  wine. 


36  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

that  time  forward  is  even  more  definitely  untheological 
than  Montaigne's  own  doctrine/  Nor  can  he  be 
supposed  to  have  disregarded  the  current  disputes  as  to 
fundamental  beliefs,  implicating  as  they  did  his  fellow- 
dramatists  Marlowe,  Kyd,  and  Greene.  The  treatise  of 
De  Mornay,  of  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney  began  and 
Golding  finished  the  translation,^  was  in  his  time  widely 
circulated  in  England  ;  and  its  very  inadequate  argu- 
mentation might  well  strengthen  in  him  the  anti-theo- 
logical leaning. 

A  serious  misconception  has  been  set  up  as  to  Shakespeare's 
cast  of  mind  by  the  persistence  of  editors  in  including  among 
his  works  without  discrimination  plays  which  are  certainly  not 
his,  as  the  Henry  VI  group,  to  which  he  contributed  little,  and 
in  particular  the  First  Part,  of  which  he  wrote  probably  nothing. 
It  is  on  the  assumption  that  that  play  is  Shakespeare's  work  that 
Mr.  Leckv  {Rationalism  in  Europe,  ed.  18S7,  i,  105-6)  speaks  of 
"  that  melancholy  picture  of  Joan  of  Arc  which  is  perhaps  the 
darkest  blot  upon  his  genius."  Now,  whatever  passages 
Shakespeare  ma}^  have  contributed  to  the  Second  and  Third 
Parts,  it  is  certain  that  he  has  barely  a  scene  in  the  First,  and 
that  there  is  not  a  line  from  his  hand  in  the  La  Pucelle  scenes. 
Many  students  think  that  Dr.  Furnivall  has  even  gone  too  far 
in  saying  that  "  the  only  part  of  it  to  be  put  down  to  Shakespeare 
is  the  Temple  Garden  scene  of  the  red  and  white  roses  "  (Introd. 
to  Leopold  Shakespeare,  p.  xxxviii)  ;  so  little  is  there  to  suggest 
even  the  juvenile  Shakespeare  there.  But  that  any  critical  and 
qualified  reader  can  still  hold  him  to  have  written  the  worst  of 
the  play  is  unintelligible.  The  whole  work  would  be  a  "blot 
on  his  genius "  in  respect  of  its  literary  weakness.  The 
doubt  was  raised  long  before  Mr.  Lecky  wrote,  and  was  made 
good  a  generation  ago.  When  Mr.  Lecky  further  proceeds, 
with  reference  to  the  witches  in  Macbeth,  to  say  [id.  Jiote)  that 

it  is  "  probable  that  Shakespeare believed  with  an  unfaltering 

faith  in  the  reality  of  witchcraft,"  he  strangely  misreads  that 
play.  Nothing  is  clearer  than  that  it  grounds  Macbeth's  action 
from  the  first  in  Macbeth's  own  character  and  his  wife's,  em- 
ploying the  witch  machinery  (already  used  by  Middleton)  to 
meet  the  popular  taste,  but  never  once  making  the  witches 
really  causal   forces.     An   "unfaltering"  believer  in  witchcraft 

'  Cp.  the  author's  Montaigne  and  Shakespeare ,  pp.  136-155. 
-  A  Woorke    concerning  the  tre-wnesse  of  tJie  Christian  Religion,  1587. 
Reprinted  in  1592,  1604,  and  1617. 


ENGLAND 


37 


who  wrote  for  the  stag^e  would  surely  have  turned  it  to  serious 
account  ill  other  tragedies.  This  Shakespeare  never  does.  On 
Mr.  Lecky's  view,  he  is  to  be  held  as  having  believed  in  the 
fairy  magic  of  the  Midsummer  NighVs  Dream  and  the  Tempest, 
and  in  the  actuality  of  such  episodes  as  that  of  the  ghost  in 
Macbeth.  But  who  for  a  moment  supposes  him  to  have  held 
any  such  belief?  It  is  probable  that  the  entire  undertaking  of 
Macbeth  (1605  ?)  and  later  of  the  Tempest  (1610?)  was  due  to 
a  wish  on  the  part  of  the  theatre  management  to  please  King 
James  (ace.  1603),  whose  belief  in  witchcraft  and  magic  was 
notorious.  Even  the  use  of  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet  is  an  old  stage 
expedient,  common  to  the  pre-Shakespearean  play  and  to  others 
of  Kyd's  and  Peele's.  Shakespeare  significantlyaltered  the  dying 
words  of  Hamlet  from  the  "  heaven  receive  my  soul  "  of  the  old 
version  to  "  the  rest  is  silence."  The  bequest  of  his  soul  to  the 
Deity  in  his  will  is  merely  the  regulation  testamentary  formula 
of  the  time.  In  his  sonnets,  which  hint  his  personal  cast  if 
anything  does,  there  is  no  trace  of  religious  creed. 

Nor  is  Shakespeare  in  this  aspect  abnormal  among  his 
colleagues.  To  say  nothing  of  Marlowe  and  the  weak 
though  gifted  Greene,  the  bulk  of  his  dramatic  rivals 
are  similarly  unconcerned  with  religion  :  indeed,  the 
quarrelsome  Nash,  with  his  Christ's  Tears  over  Jeru- 
salem., is  almost  the  only  pietistic  type  among  them. 
Hence,  in  fact,  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  Puritans  to  the 
stage.  Some  of  the  Elizabethans  do  indeed  take  up 
matters  of  creed  in  their  plays  ;  for  instance,  Peele, 
whose  David  and  Bcthsahe  is  the  first  regular  English 
drama  on  a  Biblical  subject,  frequently  writes  as 
a  Protestant  zealot,'  though  his  career  was  very  much 
on  the  lines  of  those  of  Marlowe  and  Greene  ;  and 
perhaps  Fletcher  had  a  similar  leaning,  since  it  is 
clearly  his  hand  that  penned  the  part  of  Henry  VIII  in 
which  occurs  the   Protestant  tag,  "  In  her  [Elizabeth's] 

days God  shall  be  truly  known. "^     To  the  queen's 

reign,  too,  probably  belongs  The  Atheist's  Tragedy  of 

'  The  allusion  to  "popish  ceremonies"  in  Titus Androniciis\s^roha.h\y 
from  his  hand.  See  the  author  s  work,  Did  Shakespeare  Write  "  Titus 
Andronicus" ?  where  it  is  argued  that  the  play  in  question  is  substan- 
tially Peele's  and  Greene's. 

=  As  to  the  expert  analysis  of  this  play,  which  shows  it  to  be  in  large 
part  Fletcher's,  see  P'urnivall,  as  cited,  pp.  xciii-.^cvi. 


38  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Cyril  Tourneur,  first  published  in  1611,  but  evidently 
written  in  its  author's  early  youth — a  coarse  and  worth- 
less performance,  full  of  extremely  bad  imitations  of 
Shakspere.'  To  the  age  of  Elizabeth  also  belongs, 
perhaps,  the  sententious  tragedy  of  Mustapha  by  Fulke 
Greville,  Lord  Brooke,  first  surreptitiously  published  in 
1609.  A  century  and  a  half  later  the  deists  were  fond  of 
quoting^  the  concluding  Chorus  Sacerdotiim,  beginning: 

O  wearisome  condition  of  humanity, 
Born  under  one  taw,  to  another  bound  ; 

Vainly  begot,  and  yet  forbidden  vanity  ; 
Created  sick,  commanded  to  be  sound  : 

If  nature  did  not  take  delight  in  blood 

She  would  have  made  more  easy  ways  to  good. 

It  is  natural  to  suspect  that  the  author  of  such  lines  was 
less  orthodox  than  his  own  day  had  reputed  him  ;  and 
yet  the  whole  of  his  work  shows  him  much  pre-occupied 
with  religion,  though  perhaps  in  a  deistic  spirit.  But 
Brooke's  introspective  and  undramatic  poetry  is  an 
exception  :  the  prevailing  colour  of  the  whole  drama  of 
the  Shakesperean  period  is  pre-Puritan  and  semi- 
pagan  ;  and  the  theological  spirit  of  the  next  generation, 
intensified  by  King  James,  was  recognised  by  cultured 
foreigners  as  a  change  for  the  worse. ^ 

Not  that  rationalism  became  extinct.  The  "Italianate" 
incredulity  as  to  a  future  state,  which  Sir  John  Davies 
had  sought  to  repel  by  his  poem,  Nosce  Teipsiim  (1599), 
can  hardly  have  been  overthrown  even  by  that  remark- 
able production  ;  and  there  were  other  forms  of  doubt. 
In  1602  appeared  The  Unmasking  of  the  Politique 
Atheist,  by  J.  H.  [John  Hull],  Batchelor  of  Divinitie, 
which,  however,  is  in  the  main  a  mere  attempt  to  retort 
upon  Catholics  the  charge  of  atheism  laid  by  them 
against    Protestants.     Soon    after,     in     1605,    we    find 

'  Cp.  Seccombe  and  Allen,  The  Age  of  Shakspere,  1903,  ii,  i8g. 

-  See  Alberti,  Briefe  betreffende  den  Zustand  der  Religion  in  Gross- 
Britannien,  Hanover,  1752,  ii,  429.  Alberti  reads  "God  "  at  the  end  of 
the  passage  ;  but  Dr.  Grosart's  edition  is  here  followed. 

3  Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  of  Europe,  ed.  1872,  ii,  371,  376,  and  notes;  Patti- 
son,  Isaac  Casaubo}i,  2nd  ed.  1892,  p.  286  sq. 


ENGLAND  39 


Dr.  John  Dove  producing  a  Confutation  of  Atheisme  in 
the  manner  of  previous  continental  treatises,  making  the 
word  "  atheism  "  cover  many  shades  of  theism  ;  and  an 
essayist  writing  in  1608  asserts  that,  on  account  of  the 
self-seeking  and  corruption  so  common  among  church- 
men, "  prophane  Atheisme  hath  taken  footing  in  the 
hearts  of  ignorant  and  simple  men."'  Such  assertions 
prove  merely  a  frequent  coolness  towards  religion,  not  a 
vogue  of  reasoned  unbelief.  But  the  existence  of 
rationalising  heresy  is  attested  by  the  burning  of  two 
men,  Bartholomew  Legate  and  Edward  Wightman,  for 
avowing  Unitarian  views,  in  161 2.  These,  the  last  execu- 
tions for  heresy  in  England,  were  results  of  the  theo- 
logical zeal  of  King  James,  stimulated  by  the  Calvinistic 
fanaticism  of  Archbishop  Abbot,  the  predecessor  of 
Laud.  A  Dutch  Arminian  theologian  of  Socinian 
leanings,  named  Conrad  Vorstius,  professor  at  Stein- 
furth,  had  produced  in  1606  a  heretical  treatise,  De  Deo, 
but  had  nevertheless  been  appointed  in  1610  professor 
of  theology  at  Leyden,  in  succession  to  Arminius.  His 
opinions  were  "such  as  in  our  own  day  would  certainly 
disqualify  him  from  holding  such  an  office  in  any 
Christian  University ";-  and  James,  worked  upon  by 
Abbot,  went  so  far  as  to  make  the  appointment  of 
Vorstius  a  diplomatic  question.  The  stadhouder 
Maurice  and  the  bulk  of  the  Dutch  clergy  being  of  his 
view,  the  more  tolerant  statesmen  of  Holland,  and  the 
mercantile  aristocracy,  yielded  from  motives  of  prudence, 
and  Vorstius  was  dismissed  in  order  to  save  the  English 
alliance.  As  regarded  his  own  dominions,  James  drew 
up  with  his  own  hands  a  catalogue  of  the  heresies  found 
by  him  in  Vorstius'  book,  and  caused  it  to  be  burned  in 
London  and  at  the  two  universities. ^ 

On  the  heels  of  this  amazing  episode  came  the  cases 
of    Wightman    and    Legate.      Finding,    in    a    personal 

'  Essaies  Politicke  and  Morall,  by  D.  T.  Gent,  1608,  fol.  9. 

'  Gardiner,  History  of  England,  i6oj-j6^,  4th  ed.  ii,  128.  Cp.  Bayle, 
art.  Vorstius,  Note  i\.  By  his  theolog'ical  opponents  and  by  James, 
Vorstius  was  of  course  called  an  atheist. 

3  Bayle,  art.  cited,  Note  F. 


40  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

conversation,  that  Legate  had  "ceased  to  pray  to 
Christ,"  the  king  had  him  brought  before  the  Bishop  of 
London's  Consistory  Court,  which  sentenced  the  heretic 
to  Newgate.  Being  shortly  released,  he  had  the 
imprudence  to  threaten  an  action  for  false  imprisonment, 
whereupon  he  was  re-arrested.  Chief  Justice  Coke  held 
that,  technically,  the  Consistory  Court  could  not 
sentence  to  burning  ;  but  Hobart  and  Bacon,  the  law 
officers  of  the  Crown,  and  other  judges,  were  of  opinion 
that  it  could.  Legate,  .accordingly,  was  duly  tried, 
sentenced,  and  burned  at  Smithfield  ;  and  Wightman  a 
few  days  later  was  similarly  disposed  of  at  Lichheld.' 

Bacon's  share  in  this  matter  is  obscure,  and  has  not 
been  discussed  by  either  his  assailants  or  his  vindicators. 
As  for  the  general  public,  the  historian  records  that 
"  not  a  word  was  uttered  against  this  horrible  cruelty. 
As  we  read  over  the  brief  contemporary  notices  which 
have  reached  us,  we  look  in  vain  for  the  slightest 
intimation  that  the  death  of  these  two  men  was  regarded 
with  any  other  feelings  than  those  with  which  the  writers 
were  accustomed  to  hear  of  the  execution  of  an  ordinary 
murderer.  If  any  remark  was  made  it  was  in  praise  of 
James  for  the  devotion  which  he  showed  to  the  cause  of 
God."^  That  might  have  been  reckoned  on.  It  was 
not  twenty  years  since  Hamond  and  Kett  had  been 
burned  on  similar  grounds  ;  and  there  had  been  no 
outcry  then.  Little  had  gone  on  in  the  average  intel- 
lectual life  in  the  interim  save  religious  discussion  and 
Bibliolatry,  and  not  from  such  culture  could  there  come 
any  growth  of  human  kindness  or  any  clearer  concep- 
tion of  the  law  of  reciprocity.  But  whether  by  force  of 
recoil  from  a  revival  of  the  fires  of  Smithfield  or  from  a 
perception  that  mere  cruelty  did  not  avail  to  destroy 
heresy,  the  ultima  ratio  was  never  again  resorted  to  on 
English  ground.  That  rationalism  persisted  is  clear 
from  the  Atheomastix  of  Bishop  Fotherby  (1622),  which 


^  Gardiner,  pp.  129-130. 

^  Gardiner,  as  cited.      Fuller  is  quite  acquiescent. 


ENGLAND  41 


notes  among  other  things  that  as  a  result  of  constant 
disputing  "  the  Scriptures  (with  many)  have  lost  their 
authority,  and  are  thought  onely  fit  for  the  ignorant  and 
idiote."'  And  while  the  growing  stress  of  the  strife 
between  the  ecclesiasticism  of  the  Crown  and  the  forces 
of  nonconformity  more  and  more  thrust  to  the  front 
religio-political  issues,  there  began  alongside  of  those 
strifes  the  new  and  powerful  propaganda  of  deism,  which, 
beginning  with  the  Latin  treatise,  De  Veritate,  of  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury  (1624),  was  gradually  to  leaven 
English  thought  for  over  a  century. 

Above  all,  there  now  came  into  play  the,  manifold 
influence  of  Francis  Bacon,  whose  case  illustrates 
perhaps  more  fully  than  any  other  the  difficulties,  alike 
external  and  internal,  in  the  way  of  right  thinking. 
Taken  as  a  whole,  his  work  is  on  account  of  those  diffi- 
culties divided  against  itself,  insisting  as  it  does  alter- 
nately on  a  strict  critical  method  and  on  the  subjection 
of  reason  to  the  authority  of  revelation.  He  sounds  a 
trumpet  call  to  a  new  and  universal  effort  of  free  and 
circumspect  intelligence  ;  and  on  the  instant  he  stipulates 
for  the  prerogative  of  Scripture.  Though  only  one  of 
many  who  assailed  alike  the  methodic  tyranny  of  Aristo- 
telianism-  and  the  methodless  empiricism  of  the  ordinary 
"scientific"  thought  of  the  past,  he  made  his  attack 
with  a  sustained  and  manifold  force  of  insight  and 
utterance  which  still  entitles  him  to  pre-eminence  as 
the  great  critic  of  wrong  methods  and  the  herald  of 
better.  Yet  he  not  only  transgresses  often  his  own 
principal  precepts  in  his  scientific  reasoning  :  he  falls 
below  several  of  his  contemporaries  and  predecessors  in 
point  of  his  formal  insistence  on  the  final  supremacy  of 
theology  over  reason,  alike  in  physics  and  in  ethics. 
Where  Hooker  is  ostensibly  seeking  to  widen  the  field 
of  rational  judgment  on   the  side  of  creed,   Bacon,  the 

'  AtheoDiasfix,  pref. 

^  In  \.\\Q  Advancement  of  Learning,  B.  i.  (RouUedge's  i-vol.  ed.  p.  54), 
he  himself  notes  how,  long-  before  his  time,  the  new  learning  had  in  part 
discredited  the  schoolmen. 


42  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

very  champion  of  mental  emancipation  in   the  abstract, 
declares  the  boundary  to  be  fixed. 

Of  those  lapses  from  critical  good  faith,  part  of  the 
explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  innate  difficulty  of  vital 
innovation  for  all  intelligences  ;  part  in  the  special 
pressures  of  the  religious  environment.  On  the  latter 
head  Bacon  makes  such  frequent  and  emphatic  protest 
that  we  are  bound  to  infer  on  his  part  a  personal  experi- 
ence in  his  own  day  of  the  religious  hostility  which  long 
followed  his  memory.  In  the  works  which  he  wrote  at 
the  height  of  his  powers,  especially  in  his  masterpiece, 
Xho^  Novum  Organum  (1620),  where  he  comes  closest  to 
the  problems  of  exact  inquiry,  he  specifies  again  and 
again  both  popular  superstition  and  orthodox  theology 
as  hindrances  to  scientific  research,  commenting  on 
"  those  who  out  of  faith  and  veneration  mix  their  philo- 
sophy with  theology  and  traditions,"'  and  declaring  that 
of  the  drawbacks  science  had  to  contend  with  "  the 
corruption  of  philosophy  by  superstition  and  an  admix- 
ture of  theology  is  far  the  more  widely  spread,  and  does 
the  greatest  harm,  whether  to  entire  systems  or  to  their 
parts.  For  the  human  understanding  is  obnoxious  to 
the  influence  of  the  imagination  no  less  than  to  the 
influence  of  common  notions."'  In  the  same  passage 
he  exclaims  at  the  "  extreme  levity  "  of  those  of  the 
moderns  who  have  attempted  to  "  found  a  system  of 
natural  philosophy  on  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  on 
the  book  of  Job,  and  other  parts  of  the  sacred  writings  ";^ 
and  yet  again,  coupling  as  obstinate  adversaries  of 
Natural  Philosophy  "  superstition,  and  the  blind  and 
immoderate  zeal  of  religion,"  he  roundly  affirms  that 
"  by  the  simpleness  of  certain  divines  access  to  any 
philosophy,  however  pure,  is  well  nigh  closed."-*    These 

'  Novum  Organum,  B.  i,  Aph.  62  {Works,  Routledge's  i  vol.  ed. 
p.  271).  =  Id.  Aph.  65.     (Ed.  cited,  p.  272.) 

3  Id.  lb.  Cp.  the  Advance»tent  of  Learning,  B.  ii,  and  the  De 
Augmentis,  B.  ix,  near  end.     (Ed.  cited,  pp.  173,  634.) 

■*  Id.  Aph.  89.  (Ed.  cited,  p.  285.)  Compare  Aph.  46,  49,  96;  the 
Valerius  Terminus,  cap.  25  ;  the  EngHsh  Filuin  Lahyrinthi,  %  7  ;  and  the 
De  Principiis  atque  Originibus.  (Ed.  cited,  pp.  204,  208,  265,  267,  288, 
650.) 


ENGLAND  43 


charges  are  repeatedly  salved  by  such  claims  as  that 
"true  religion  "  puts  no  obstacles  in  the  way  of  science  ;^ 
that  the  book  of  Job  runs  much  to  natural  philosophy  ; ^ 
and,  in  particular,  in  the  last  book  of  the  De  Augmentis 
Scientiariim^  redacted  after  his  disgrace,  by  the  declara- 
tion— more  emphatic  than  those  of  the  earlier  Advance- 
ment of  Learning — that  "  Sacred  Theology  ought  to  be 
derived  from  the  word  and  oracles  of  God,  and  not  from 
the  light  of  nature  or  the  dictates  of  reason."^  In  this 
mood  he  goes  so  far  as  to  declare,  with  the  thorough- 
going obscurantists,  that  "the  more  discordant  and 
incredible  the  divine  mystery  is,  the  more  honour  is 
shown  to  God  in  believing  it,  and  the  nobler  is  the 
victory  of  faith." 

Yet  even  in  the  calculated  extravagance  of  this  last 
pronouncement  there  is  a  ground  for  question  whether 
the  fallen  Chancellor,  hoping  to  retrieve  himself,  and 
trying  every  device  of  his  ripe  sagacity  to  minimise 
opposition,  was  not  straining  his  formal  orthodoxy 
beyond  his  real  intellectual  habit.  As  against  such 
wholesale  affirmation  we  have  his  declarations  that 
"certain  it  is  that  God  worketh  nothing  in  nature  but 
by  second  causes,"  and  that  any  pretence  to  the  contrary 
"is  mere  imposture  as  it  were  in  favour  towards  God, 
and  nothing  else  but  to  offer  to  the  author  of  truth  the 
unclean  sacrifice  of  a  lie";^  his  repeated  objection  to 
the  discussion  of  Final  Causes  ;5  his  attack  on  Plato 
and  Aristotle  for  rejecting  the  atheistic  scientific  method 
of  Democritus  f  his  peremptory  assertion  that   motion 


^    Valerius  Terminus,  cap.  i.      (Ed.  cited,  p.  18S. ) 

^  Id.  p.  187  ;  Fihiin  Labyriiifhi,  p.  209. 

3  B.  ix,  ch.  I.  (Ed.  cited,  p.  631.)  Compare  Valerius  Terminus, 
cap.  i  (p.  186),  and  De  Aug.  B.  iii,  ch.  2  (p.  456),  as  to  the  impossibility  of 
knowing-  the  will  and  character  of  God  from  Nature,  thoug-h  {De  Aug. 
last  cit. )  it  reveals  his  power  and  g^lory. 

•*  Advancement  of  Learning,  B.  i.  (Ed.  cited,  p.  45.)  Cp.  Valerius 
Terminus,  cap.  i  (p.  187). 

s  Advancement,  B.  ii ;  De  Augtnentis,  B.  iii,  cc.  4  and  5 ;  Valerius 
Terminus,  cap.  25  ;  Novum  Organum,  B.  i,  Aph.  48.  B.  ii,  Aph.  2.  (Ed. 
cited,  pp.  96,  205,  266,  302,  471,  473.) 

^  De  Principiis  atque  Originibus.  (Ed.  cited,  pp.  649-50. )  Elsewhere 
{De  Aug.   B.  iii,  ch.  4,  p.   471)  he   expressly  puts  it  that  the  system  of 


44  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


is  a  property  of  matter;'  and  his  almost  Democritean 
handling  of  the  final  problem,  in  which  he  insists  that 
primal  matter  is,  "  next  to  God,  the  cause  of  causes, 
itself  only  without  a  cause."-  Further,  though  he 
speaks  of  Scriptural  miracles  in  a  conventional  way,^ 
he  drily  pronounces  in  one  passage  that,  "as  for  narra- 
tions touching  the  prodigies  and  miracles  of  religions, 
they  are  either  not  true  or  not  natural,  and,  therefore, 
impertinent  for  the  story  of  nature. "+  Finally,  as  against 
the  formal  capitulation  to  theology  at  the  close  of  the 
De  Augmentis ,  he  has  left  standing  in  the  first  book  of 
the  Latin  version  the  ringing  doctrine  of  the  original 
Advancement  of  Learning  (1605),  that  "there  is  no 
power  on  earth  which  setteth  up  a  throne  or  chair  in  the 
spirits  and  souls  of  men,  and  in  their  cogitations, 
imaginations,  opinions,  and  beliefs,  but  knowledge  and 
learning  ";5  and  in  his  Wisdom  of  the  Ancients^  he  has 
contrived  to  turn  a  crude  myth  into  a  subtle  allegory  in 
behalf  of  toleration. 

Thus,  despite  his  many  resorts  to  and  prostrations 
before  the  Scriptures,  the  general  effect  of  his  writings 
in  this  regard  is  to  set  up  in  the  minds  of  his  readers  the 
old  semi-rationalistic  equivoque  of  a  "  two-fold  truth"; 
reminding  us  as  he  does  that  he  "did  in  the  beginning 
separate  the  divine  testimony  from  the  human."  When, 
therefore,  he  announces  that  "  we  know  by  faith  "  that 
"matter  was  created  from  nothing,"^  he  has  the  air  of 
juggling  with  his  problem  ;  and  his  further  suggestion 
as  to  the  possibility  of  matter  being  endowed  with  a  force 
of  evolution,  however  cautiously  put,  is  far  removed  from 
orthodoxy.  Accordingly,  the  charge  of  atheism — which 
he   notes  as  commonly  brought  against  all  who  dwell 

Democritiis,  which  "  removed  God  and  mind  from  the  structure  of 
things,"  was  more  favourable  to  true  science  than  the  teleologfy  and 
theolog-y  of  Plato  and  Aristotle. 

'  Id.  pp.  651,  657.  -  Id.  p.  648. 

3  De  Augmentis,  B.  iii,  ch.  2  ;   B.  iv,  ch.  2.      (Ed.  cited,  pp.  456,  482.) 

■*  De  At<g»teiifis,  B.  ii,  ch.  i.      (Ed.  cited,  p.  428.) 

5  Ed.  cited,  p.  73. 

*  No.  xviii,  Diomedes.      Ed.  cited,  p.  841. 

7  De  Principiis  atque  Origiiiibiis,  p.  664. 


ENGLAND  45 


solely  on  second  causes" — was  actually  cast  at  his 
memory  in  the  next  generation.^  It  was  of  course  false  : 
on  the  issue  of  theism  he  is  continually  descanting  with 
quite  conventional  unction  ;  as  in  the  familiar  essay  on 
atheism. 3  His  dismissal  of  final  causes  as  *'  barren  " 
meant  merely  that  the  notion  was  barren  of  scientific 
result  ;4  and  he  refers  the  question  to  metaphysic.^  But 
if  his  theism  was  of  a  kind  disturbing  to  believers  in  a 
controlling  Providence,  as  little  was  it  satisfactory  to 
Christian  fervour  ;  and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the 
main  stream  of  his  argument  made  for  a  non-Biblical 
deism,  if  not  for  atheism  ;  his  dogmatic  orthodoxies 
being  undermined  by  his  own  scientific  teaching.^ 

As  regards  his  intellectual  inconsistencies,  we  can  but 
say  that  they  are  such  as  meet  us  in  men's  thinking  at 
every  new  turn.  Though  we  can  see  that  Bacon's 
orthodoxy  "doth  protest  too  much,"  with  an  eye  on 
king  and  commons  and  public  opinion,  we  are  not  led 
to  suppose  that  he  had  ever  in  his  heart  cast  off  his 
inherited  creed.  He  shows  frequent  Christian  prejudice 
in  his  references  to  pagans  ;  and  can  write  that  "  To  seek 
to  extinguish  anger  utterly  is  but  the  bravery  of  the 
Stoics, "7  pretending  that  the  Christian  books  are  more 
accommodating,  and  ignoring  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
In  arguing  that  the  "  religion  of  the  heathen  "  set  men 

'  Nov.  Org.  i,  89  ;  Filum  Labyriiithi.,  §  7  ;  Essay  16. 

=  See  Francis  Osborn's  pref.  {Author  to  Reader)  to  his  "  Miscellany," 
in  Works,  7th  ed.  1673. 

3  Cp.   Valerius  Terminus,  cap.  i. 

"*  This  is  pointed  out  by  Glassford  in  his  translation  of  the  Novum 
Organicm  (1844,  P-  -26);  and  by  Ellis  in  his  and  Spedding's  edition  of  the 
Works.     (Routledge's  rep.  pp.  32,  473,  note.) 

5  De  Augmetitis,  B.  iii,  ch.  4,  end. 

^  Lechler  (Gesc/i.  des  englischen  Deismus,  pp.  23-25)  notes  that  Bacon 
involuntarily  made  for  deism.  Cp.  Amand  Saintes,  Hist,  de  la  philos. 
de  Kant,  1844,  p.  69  ;  and  Kuno  Fischer, Francis  Bacon,  Eng-.  trans.  1857, 
ch.  xi,  pp.  341-3.  Dean  Church  (Bacon,  in  "Men  of  Letters"  series, 
pp.  174,  205)  Insists  that  Bacon  held  by  revelation  and  immortality  ;  and 
can,  of  course,  cite  his  profession  of  such  belief,  which  is  not  to  be  dis- 
puted. (Cp.  the  careful  judgment  of  Professor  Fowler  in  his  Bacon, 
pp.  180-191,  and  his  ed.  of  the  Novum  Organum,  1878,  pp.  43-53-)  But 
the  tendency  of  the  specific  Baconian  teaching  is  none  the  less  to^  put 
these  beliefs  aside,  and  to  overlay  them  with  a  naturalistic  habit  of 
mind.     At  the  first  remove  from  Bacon  we  have  Hobbes. 

">  Essay  57,  Of  Anger. 


46  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

upon  ending  "  all  inquisition  of  nature  in  metaphysical 
or  theological  discourse,"  and  in  charging  the  Turks 
with  a  special  tendency  to  "  ascribe  ordinary  effects  to 
the  immediate  workings  of  God,"'  he  is  playing  not 
very  scrupulously  on  the  vanity  of  his  co-religionists. 
As  he  was  only  too  well  aware,  both  tendencies  ruled 
the  Christian  thought  of  his  own  day,  and  derive  direct 
from  the  sacred  books — not  from  "  abuse,"  as  he  pretends. 
And  on  the  metaphysical  as  on  the  common-sense  side 
of  his  thought  he  is  self-eontradictory,  even  as  most  men 
have  been  before  and  since,  because  judgment  cannot 
easily  fulfil  the  precepts  it  frames  for  itself  in  illuminated 
hours.  Latter-day  students  have  been  impressed,  as 
w^as  Leibnitz,  by  the  original  insight  wdth  which  Bacon 
negated  the  possibility  of  our  forming  any  concrete  con- 
ception of  a  prim.ary  form  of  matter,  and  insisted  on  its 
necessary  transcendence  of  our  powers  of  knowledge. "" 
On  the  same  principle  he  should  have  negated  every 
modal  conception  of  the  still  more  recondite  Something 
which  he  put  as  antecedent  to  matter,  and  called  God.^ 
Yet  in  his  normal  thinking  he  seems  to  have  been 
content  with  the  commonplace  formula  given  in  his 
essay  ow  Atheism — that  we  cannot  suppose  the  totality 
of  things  to  be  "  without  a  mind."  He  has  here  endorsed 
in  its  essentials  what  he  elsewhere  calls  "the  heresy  of 
the  Anthropomorphites,"-^  failing  to  apply  his  own  law 
in  his  philosophy,  as  elsewhere  in  his  physics.  When, 
however,  we  realise  that  similar  inconsistency  is  fallen 
into  after  him  by  Spinoza,  and  wholly  escaped  perhaps 
by  no  thinker,  we  are  in  a  way  to  understand  that 
with  all  his  deflections  from  his  own  higher  law  Bacon 
may  have  profoundly  and  fruitfully  influenced  the 
thought  of  the  next  generation,  if  not  his  own. 

The  fact  of  this  influence  has  been  somewhat  obscured 


'    Valerhis  Terminus,  ch.  25. 

^  De  Principiis,  ed.  cited,  pp.  648-9.      Cp.  pp.  642-3. 
3  Id.  p.  64S. 

"•    Valerius    Terminus,  cap.  ii  ;  De  Augmentis,  B.  v,  ch.  4.      Ed.  cited, 
pp.  199,  517. 


ENGLAND  47 


by  the  modern  dispute  as  to  whether  he  had  any  im- 
portant influence  on  scientific  progress.'  At  first  sight 
the  old  claim  for  him  in  that  regard  seems  to  be  heavily 
discounted  by  the  simple  fact  that  he  definitelyjrejected 
the  Copernican  system  of  astronomy.^  Though,  how- 
ever, this  gravely  emphasises  his  fallibility,  it  does  not 
cancel  his  services  as  a  stimulator  of  scientific  thoueht. 
At  that  time,  only  a  few  were  yet  intelligentlyjconvinced 
Copernicans  ;  and  we  have  the  record  of  how,  in  Bacon's 
day,  Harvey  lost  heavily  in  credit  and  in  his  medical 
practice  by  propounding  his  discovery  of  the  circulation 
of  the  blood, 3  which,  it  is  said,  no  physician  over  forty 
years  old  at  that  time  believed  in.  For  men  of  that 
century  it  was  thus  no  fatal  shortcoming  in  Bacon  to 
have  failed  to  grasp  the  true  scheme  of  sidereal  motion,^ 
any  more  than  it  was  one  on  Galileo's  side  to  be  wrong 
about  the  tides.  They  could  realise  that  it  was  precisely 
in  astronomy,  for  lack  of  special  study  and  expert  know- 
ledge, that  Bacon  was  least  qualified  to  judge.  Intel- 
lectual influence  on  science  is  not  necessarily  dependent 
on  actual  scientific  achievement,  though  that  of  course 
furthers  and  establishes  it  ;  and  the  fact  of  Bacon's 
impact  on  the  mind  of  the  next  age  is  abundantly  proved 
by  testimonies. 

For  a  time   the   explicit   tributes   came   chiefly  from 

'  Cp.  Brewster,  Life  of  Neivton,  1855,  ii,  400-4  ;  Draper,  Intel.  Devel. 
of  Europe,  ed.  1875,  ii,  258-60  ;  Dean  Church,  Bacon,  pp.  180-201  ; 
Fowler,  Bacon,  ch.  vi  ;  Professor  Lodg-e,  Pioneers  of  Science,  ■^^.  145-151; 
Lan_o-e,  Gesch.  d.  Mater,  i,  197  sq.  (Engf.  trans,  i,  236-7),  and  cit.  from 
Liebig — as  to  whom,  however,  see  Fowler,  pp.  133,  157. 

-  A^ovum  Orgauuni,  ii,  46  and  48,  §  17  ;  De  Aug.  iii,  4;  Thema  Coeli. 
Ed.  cited,  pp.  364,  375,  461,  705,  709.  Whewell  (vY/^/.  of  Induct.  Sciences, 
3rd  ed.  i,  296,  298)  igfnores  the  second  and  third  of  these  passag'es  in 
denying-  Hume's  assertion  that  Bacon  rejected  the  Copernican  theory 
with  "  disdain."  It  is  true,  however,  that  Bacon  had  vacillated.  The 
facts  are  fairly  faced  by  Professor  Fowler  in  his  Bacon,  1881,  pp.  151-2, 
and  his  ed.  oi  Novum  Organum,  Introd.  pp.  30-36.  See  also  the  summing- 
up  of  Ellis  in  notes  to  passag'es  above  cited,  and  at  p.  675. 

3  Aubrey,  Lives  of  Eminent  Persons,  ed.  1813,  vol.  ii,  Pt.  ii,  p.  383. 

•*  As  Professor  Masson  points  out  (Poet.  Works  of  Milton,  1874,  Introd. 
i,  92  sq. ),  not  only  does  Milton  seem  uncertain  to  the  last  concerning- 
the  truth  of  the  "Copernican  system,  but  his  friends  and  literar\-  asso- 
ciates, the  "  Smectymnuans,"  in  their  answer  to  Bishop  Hall's  Humble 
Remonstrance  (1641),  had  pointed  to  the  Copernican  doctrine  as  an 
unquestioned  instance  of  a  supreme  absurdity. 


48  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

abroad  ;  though  at  all  times,  even  in  the  first  shock  of 
his  disgrace,  there  were  Englishmen  perfectly  convinced 
of  his  greatness.  To  the  winning  of  foreign  favour  he 
had  specially  addressed  himself  in  his  adversity.  Grown 
wary  in  act  as  well  as  wise  in  theory,  he  deleted  from 
the  Latin  De  Augmentis  a  whole  series  of  passages  of 
the  Advancement  of  Learning  \\K\ch.  disparaged  Catholics 
and  Catholicism;'  and  he  had  his  reward  in  being  appre- 
ciated by  many  Jesuit  and  other  Catholic  scholars."  But 
Protestants  such  as  Coraenius  and  Leibnitz  were  ere 
long  more  emphatic  than  any  Catholics  ;3  and  at  the 
time  of  the  Restoration  we  find  Bacon  enthusiastically 
praised  among  the  more  open-minded  and  scientifically 
biassed  thinkers  of  England,  who  included  some  zealous 
Christians.'*  It  was  not  that  his  special  "  method  " 
enabled  them  to  reach  important  results  with  any  new 
facility  :  its  impracticability  is  now  insisted  on  by  friends 
as  well  as  foes.^  It  was  that  he  arraigned  with  extra- 
ordinary psychological  insight  and  brilliance  of  phrase 
the  mental  vices  which  had  made  discoveries  so  rare  ; 
the  alternate  self-complacency  and  despair  of  the  average 
indolent  mind;  the  "opinion  of  store  "  which  was  "cause 
of  want  "  ;  the  timid  or  superstitious  evasion  of  research. 
In  all  this  he  was  using  his  own  highest  powers,  his 
comprehension  of  human  character  and  his  genius  for 
speech.  And  though  his  own  scientific  results  were  not 
to  be  compared  with  those  of  Galileo  and  Descartes,  the 

^  See  notes  in  ed.  cited,  pp.  50,  53,  61,  63,  68,  75,  76,  84,  no. 

^  Fowler,  ed.  oi  Nov.  Org.  §  14,  pp.  101-4. 

3  Fowler,  ed.  oi  Nov.  Org.  §  14,  p.  108;   Ellis  in  ed.  cited,  p.  643. 

•'  Rawley's  Life,  in  ed.  cited,  p.  9  ;  Osborn,  as  above  cited  ;  Fowler, 
ed.  of  N^ov.  Org.  Introd.  §  14 ;  T.  Martin,  Character  of  Bacon,  1835, 
pp.  216,  227,  222-3. 

5  Cp.  Fowler,  Bacon,  pp.  139-141  ;  Mill,  System  of  Logic,  B.  vi,  ch.  v, 
§  5  )  Jevons,  Principles  of  Scie?ice,  i-vol.  ed.  p.  576  ;  Tyndall,  Scientific 
Use  of  the  Imagination,  3rd  ed.  pp.  4,  8-9,  42-3  ;  T.  Akirtin,  as  cited, 
pp.  210-238;  ^-Agehoi,  Postulates  of  English  Political  Economy,  ed.  1885, 
pp.  18-19  !  Ellis  and  Spedding-,  in  ed.  cited,  pp.  x,  xii,  22,  389.  The 
notion  of  a  dialectic  method  which  should  mechanically  enable  any  man 
to  make  discoveries  is  an  irredeemable  fallacy,  and  must  be  abandoned. 
Bacon's  own  remarkable  anticipation  of  modern  scientific  thought  in  the 
formula  that  heat  is  a  mode  of  motion  [Nozk  Org.  ii,  20)  is  not  mechani- 
cally yielded  by  his  own  process,  noteworthy  and  sug-gestive  though 
that  is. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  49 

wonderful  range  of  his  observation  and  his  curiosity,  the 
unwearying  zest  of  his  scrutiny  of  well-nigh  all  the 
known  fields  of  Nature,  must  have  been  an  inspiration 
to  multitudes  of  students  besides  those  who  have 
recorded  their  debt  to  him.  It  is  probable  that  but  for 
his  literary  genius,  which  though  little  discussed  is  of  a 
verv  rare  order,  his  influence  would  have  been  both 
narrower  and  less  durable  ;  but,  being  one  of  the  great 
writers  of  the  modern  world,  he  has  swayed  men  down 
till  our  own  day. 

§  4.  Popular  Tlioiight  in  Europe. 

Of  popular  freethought  in  the  rest  of  Europe  there  is 
little  to  chronicle  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the 
Reformation,  The  epoch-making  work  of  Copernicus, 
published  in  1543,  had  little  or  no  immediate  effect  in 
Germany,  where,  as  we  have  seen,  physical  and  verbal 
strifes  had  begun  with  the  ecclesiastical  revolution,  and 
were  to  continue  to  waste  the  nation's  energy  for  a 
century.  In  1546,  all  attempts  at  ecclesiastical  recon- 
ciliation having  failed,  the  emperor  Charles  V,  in  whom 
Melanchthon  had  seen  a  model  monarch,' decided  to  put 
down  the  Protestant  heresy  by  war.  Luther  had  just 
died,  apprehensive  for  his  cause.  Civil  war  now  raged 
till  the  peace  of  Augsburg  in  1555  ;  whereafter  Charles 
abdicated  in  favour  of  his  son  Philip.  Here  were  in 
part  the  conditions  which  in  France  and  elsewhere  were 
later  followed  by  a  growth  of  rational  unbelief ;  and 
there  are  some  traces  even  at  this  time  of  skepticism  in 
high  places  in  the  German  world,  notably  in  the  case  of 
the  Emperor  Maximilian  II,  who,  "  grown  up  in  the 
spirit  of  doubt,"-  would  never  identify  himself  with 
either  Protestants  or  Catholics.-^  But  in  Germany  there 
was  still  too  little  intellectual  light,  too  little  brooding 
over  experience,  to  permit  of  the  spread  of  such  a 
temper  ;  and  the  balance  of  forces  amounted  only  to  a 

'  Kohlrausch,  Hist,  of  Germany^  Eng-.  trans,  p.  385. 
=  Moritz  Ritter,  Geschichtc  der  dcutschen  Union,  1867-73,  ii,  55. 
3  Menzel,  Geschichte  der  Deittschen,  3te  Aufl.  Cap.  416. 
VOL.   II  E 


50  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

deadlock  between  the  ecclesiastical  parties.  Protes- 
tantism on  the  intellectual  side,  as  already  noted,  had 
sunk  into  a  bitter  and  barren  polemic'  among  the 
reformers  themselves  ;  and  many  who  had  joined  the 
movement  reverted  to  Catholicism."  Meanwhile  the 
teaching  and  preaching  Jesuits  were  zealously  at  work, 
turning  the  dissensions  of  the  enemy  to  account,  and 
contrasting  its  schism  upon  schism  with  the  unity  of  the 
church.  But  Protestantism  was  well  welded  to  the 
financial  interest  of  the  many  princes  and  others  who 
had  acquired  the  church  lands  confiscated  at  the  Refor- 
mation ;  since  a  return  to  Catholicism  would  mean  the 
surrender  of  these. ^  Thus  there  wrought  on  the  one 
side  the  organised  spirit  of  anti-heresy^  and  on  the  other 
the  organised  spirit  of  Bibliolatry,  neither  gaining 
ground  ;  and  between  the  two  intellectual  life  was 
paralysed.  Protestantism  saw  no  way  of  advance  ;  and 
the  prevailing  temper  began  to  be  that  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  expectant  of  the  end  of  the  world. ^  Superstition 
abounded,  especially  the  belief  in  witchcraft,  now  acted 
on  with  frightful  cruelty  throughout  the  whole  Christian 
world  ;^  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case  Catholicism  counted 
for  nothing  on  the  opposite  side. 

The  only  element  of  rationalism  that  one  historian 
of  culture  can  detect  is  the  tendency  of  the  German 
moralists  of  the  time  to  turn  the  devil  into  an  abstrac- 
tion by  identifying  him  with  the  different  aspects  of 
human  folly  and  vice.''  There  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  somewhat  higher  manifestation  of  the  spirit  of  reason 


'  Cp.  Gardiner,  The  Tliirty  Years'  War,  8th  ed.  pp.  12-13  >  Kohlrausch, 
p.  438  ;  Pusey,  Histor.  Enq.  into  German  Rationalism,  pp.  9-25  ;  Hen- 
derson, Short  History  of  Germany,  i,  oh.  16. 

-  Kohlrausch,  p.  439.      A  specially  strong   reaction   set   in  about  1573. 
Ritter,  Geschichte  der  deiitschen  Union,  \,  19.      Cp.  Menzel,  Cap.  433. 

3  Cp.  Gardiner,  The   Tliirty    Years     War,   pp.  16,  18,  21  ;   Kohlrausch, 

P-  370- 

■*  As  to  this  see  Moritz  Ritter,  as  cited,  i,  9,  27  ;  ii,  122  sq.  ;  Dunham, 

History  of  the  Germanic  Empire,  iii,  186;   Henderson,  i,  411  sq. 

5  Freytag,  Bilder  aus  der  deutschen  Vergangenheit,  Bd.  ii,  Abth.  ii, 
1883,  p.  381  ;   Bd.  iii,  ad  init. 

^  Cp.  Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  small  ed.  i,  53-83. 

^  Freytag,  Bilder,  Bd.  ii,  Abth.  ii,  p.  378. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  51 


in  the  shape  of  some  new  protests  against  the  super- 
stition of  sorcery.  About  1560  a  Catholic  priest  named 
CorneHus  Loos  Callidius  was  imprisoned  by  a  papal 
nuncio  for  declaring  that  witches'  confessions  were 
merely  the  results  of  torture.  Forced  to  retract,  he  was 
released;  but  again  offended,  and  was  again  imprisoned, 
dying  in  time  to  escape  the  fate  of  a  councillor  of 
Treves,  named  Flade,  who  was  burned  alive  for  arguing, 
on  the  basis  of  an  old  canon  (mistakenly  named  from 
the  Council  of  Ancyra),  that  sorcery  is  an  imaginary 
crime.'  Then  appeared  the  famous  John  Wier's  treatise 
on  witchcraft,^  a  work  which,  though  fully  adhering  to 
the  belief  in  the  devil  and  things  demoniac,  argued 
aeainst  the  notion  that  witches  were  conscious  workers 
of  evil.  Wier^  was  a  physician,  and  saw  the  problem 
partly  as  one  in  pathology.  Other  laymen,  and  even 
priests,  as  we  have  seen,  had  reacted  still  more  strongly 
against  the  prevailing  insanity  ;  but  it  had  the  authority 
of  Luther  on  its  side,  and  with  the  common  people  the 
protests  counted  for  little. 

Reactions  against  Protestant  bigotry  in  Holland  on 
other  lines  were  not  much  more  successful,  and  indeed 
were  not  numerous.  One  of  the  most  interesting  is  that 
of  Dirk  Coornhert  (1522-1590),  who  by  his  manifold 
literary  activities*  became  one  of  the  founders  of  Dutch 
prose.  In  his  youth  Coornhert  had  visited  Spain  and 
Portugal,  and  had  there,  it  is  said,  seen  an  execution  of 
victims  of  the  Inquisition, ^  deriving  thence  the  aversion  to 
intolerance  which  stamped  his  whole  life's  work.     It  does 

'   The  Pope  and  the  CounciU  Engf.  trans,  p.  260  ;   French  trans,  p.  285. 

^  De  Praestigiis  Daenioniim,  1563.  See  it  described  by  Lecky, 
Rationalism,  i,  85-7  ;   Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  ii,  76. 

3  By  Dutch  historians  Wier  is  claimed  as  a  Dutchman.  He  was  born 
at  Grave,  in  North  Brabant,  but  studied  medicine  at  Paris  and  Orleans, 
and  after  practising-  physic  at  Arnheim  in  the  Netheriands  was  called 
to  Dusseldorf  as  physician  to  the  Duke  of  Julich,  to  whom  he  dedi- 
cated his  treatise.  His  ideas  are  probably  traceable  to  his  studies  in 
France. 

•*  His  collected  works  (1632)  amount  to  nearly  7,000  folio  pages.  J. 
Ten  Brink,  Kleine  Geschiedenis  der  Nederlandsche  Lettcren,  1S82,  p.  91. 

5  Ten  Brink,  p.  86.  Jonckbloet  {Beknopte  Geschiede^iis  der  Nederl. 
Letterkunde,  ed.  1880,  p.  148)  is  less  specific. 


52  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

not  appear,  however,  that  any  such  peninsular  experience 
was  required,  seeing  that  the  Dutch  Inquisition  became 
abundantly  active  about  the  same  period.  Learning 
Latin  at  thirty,  in  order  to  read  Augustine,  he  became 
a  translator  of  Cicero  and — singularly  enough — of 
Boccaccio.  An  engraver  to  trade,  he  became  first 
notary  and  later  secretary  to  the  burgomaster  of 
Haarlem  ;  and,  failing  to  steer  clear  of  the  strifes  of  the 
time,  was  arrested  and  imprisoned  at  the  Hague  in  1567. 
On  his  release  he  sought  safety  at  Kleef  in  Santen, 
whence  he  returned  after  the  capture  of  Brill  to  become 
secretary  of  the  new  national  Government  at  Haarlem  ; 
but  he  had  again  to  take  to  flight,  and  lived  at  Kleef 
from  1572  to  1577.  In  1578  he  debated  at  Leyden  with 
two  preachers  of  Delft  on  predestination,  which  he 
declared  to  be  unscriptural  ;  and  was  officially  ordered 
to  keep  silence.  Thereupon  he  published  a  protest,  and 
got  into  fresh  trouble  by  drawing  up,  as  notary,  an 
appeal  to  the  Prince  of  Orange  on  behalf  of  his  Catholic 
fellow-countrymen  for  freedom  of  worship,  and  by 
holding  another  debate  at  the  Hague.'  Always  his 
master-ideal  was  that  of  toleration,  in  support  of  which 
he  wrote  strongly  against  Beza  and  Calvin  (this  in 
a  Latin  treatise  published  only  after  his  death), 
declaring  the  persecution  of  heretics  to  be  a  crime  in  the 
kingdom  of  God  ;  and  it  was  as  a  moralist  that  he  gave 
the  lead  to  Arminius  on  the  question  of  predestination.^ 
"  Against  Protestant  and  Catholic  sacerdotalism  and 
scholastic  he  set  forth  humanist  world-wisdom  and 
Biblical  ethic, "^  to  that  end  publishing  a  translation  of 
Boethius  (1585),  and  composing  his  chief  work  on 
Zedekitnst  (Ethics).  Christianity,  he  insisted,  lay  not 
in  profession  or  creed,  but  in  practice.  By  way  of 
restraining  the  ever-increasing  malignity  of  theological 
strifes,  he  made  the  quaint  proposal  that  the  clergy 
should  not  be  allowed  to  utter  anything  but  the  actual 


'  Ten  Brink,  pp.  89-90.  -  Hallain,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  83.' 

3  Ten  Brink,  p.  87. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  53 

words  of  the  Scriptures,  and  that  all  works  of  theology 
should  be  sequestrated.  For  these  and  other  heteroclite 
suggestions  he  was  expelled  from  Delft  (where  he  sought 
finally  to  settle,  1587)  by  the  magistrates,  at  the  instance 
of  the  preachers,  but  was  allowed  to  die  in  peace  at 
Gouda,  where  he  wrote  to  the  last.' 

All  the  while,  though  he  drew  for  doctrine  on 
Plutarch,  Cicero,  Seneca,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  equally 
with  the  Bible,  Coornhert  habitually  founded  on  the 
latter  as  the  final  authority.-  On  no  other  footing 
could  any  one  in  his  age  and  country  stand  as  a  teacher. 
It  was  not  till  after  generations  of  furious  intolerance 
that  a  larger  outlook  was  possible  in  the  Netherlands  ; 
and  the  first  steps  towards  it  were  naturally  taken 
independently  of  theology.  Although  Grotius  figured 
for  a  century  as  one  of  the  chief  exponents  of  Christian 
evidences,  it  is  certain  that  his  great  work  on  the  Law  of 
War  and  Peace  (1625)  made  for  a  rationalistic  concep- 
tion of  society.  "  Modern  historians  of  jurisprudence, 
like  Lerminier  and  Bluntschli,  represent  it  as  the 
distinctive  merit  of  Grotius  that  he  freed  the  science 
from  bondage  to  theology."^  The  breach,  indeed,  is 
not  direct,  as  theistic  sanctions  are  paraded  in  the 
Prolegomena  ;  but  along  with  these  goes  the  avowal 
that  natural  ethic  would  be  valid  even  were  there  no 
God,  and — as  against  the  formula  of  Horace,  Utilitas 
justi  mater — that  "  the  mother  of  natural  right  is  human 
nature  itself."'^ 

Where  Grotius,  defender  of  the  faith,  figured  as  a 
heretic,  unbelief  could  not  speak  out,  though  there 
are  traces  of  its  underground  life.  The  charge  of 
atheism  was  brought  against  the  Excercitationes  Philoso- 
phicae  of  Gorl^us,    published  in    1620  ;    but   the    book 

'  Jonckbloet,  Beknopte  Geschiedenis,  p.  149;  Ten  Brink,  p.  91  ;  Bayle, 
Dicfionnaire,  art.    Koornhert  ;     Punjer,    Hist,    of  the  Chr.    Philos.    of 
Religion,  Eng.  trans,  p.  269  ;   Dr.  E.  Gosse,  art.  on  Dutch   Literature  in 
Encyc.  Brit.  9th  ed.  xii,  93. 

-  Ten  Brink,  p.  91.  3  Professor  Flint,   Vico,  p.  142. 

•*  De  Jure  Belli  et  Pads,  proleg.  §§  11,  i6. 


54  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

being  posthumous,  conclusions  could  not  be  tried. 
Views  far  short  of  atheism,  however,  were  dangerous  to 
their  holders  ;  for  the  merely  Socinian  work  of  Voelkel, 
published  at  Amsterdam  in  1642,  was  burned  by  order 
of  the  authorities,  and  a  second  impression  shared  the 
same  fate.'  In  1653  the  States  of  Holland  forbade  the 
publication  of  all  Unitarian  books  and  all  Socinian 
worship  ;  and  though  the  veto  as  to  books  was  soon 
evaded,  that  on  worship  was  enforced.''  Descartes,  as 
we  shall  see,  during  his- stay  in  Holland  was  menaced 
by  clerical  fanaticism.  Some  fared  worse.  In  the 
generation  after  Grotius,  one  Koerbagh,  a  doctor,  for 
publishing  (1668)  a  dictionary  of  definitions  containing 
advanced  ideas,  had  to  fly  from  Amsterdam.  At  Culen- 
berg  he  translated  a  Unitarian  work  and  began  another  ; 
but  was  betrayed,  tried  for  blasphemy,  and  sentenced  to 
ten  years'  imprisonment,  to  be  followed  by  ten  years' 
banishment.  He  compromised  by  dying  in  prison 
within  the  year.  Even  as  late  as  1678  Hadrian  Bever- 
land  (afterwards  appointed,  through  Isaac  Vossius,  to  a  lay 
office  under  the  Church  of  England)  was  imprisoned  and 
struck  oft'  the  rolls  of  Leyden  University  for  his  Peccatiim 
On'ginale,  in  which  he  speculated  erotically  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  sin  of  Adam  and  Eve.  The  book  was  furi- 
ously answered,  and  publicly  burned. ^  It  was  only  after 
an  age  of  such  intolerance  that  Holland,  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  began  to  become  for  England 
a  model  of  freedom  in  opinion  as  formerly  in  trade. 

Unitarianism,  which  we  have  seen  thus  invading 
Holland  somewhat  persistently  during  half  a  century, 
was  then  as  now  impotent  beyond  a  certain  point  by 
reason  of  its  divided  allegiance,  though  it  has  always 
had  the  support  of  some  good  minds.  Its  denial  of  the 
deity  of  Jesus  could  not  be  made  out  without  a  certain 
superposing  of  reason  on  Scripture  ;  and  yet  to  Scrip- 
ture  it  always  finally  appealed.     The  majority  of  men 

'  Bayle,  art.  Voelkel. 

'  Schlegel's  note  on  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  862. 

3  Nic^ron,  Mdmoires  pour  servir,  etc.  xiv(i73i),  34039. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  55 


accepting'  such  authority  have  always  tended  to  believe 
more  uncritically  ;  and  the  majority  of  men  who  are 
habitually  critical  will  always  repudiate  the  Scriptural 
jurisdiction.  In  Poland,  accordingly,  the  movement,  so 
flourishing  in  its  earlier  years,  was  soon  arrested,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  the  perception  that  it  drove  many  Pro- 
testants back  to  Catholicism  ;  among  these  being  pre- 
sumably a  number  whose  critical  insight  showed  them 
that  there  was  no  firm  standing-ground  between 
Catholicism  and  Naturalism.  Every  new  advance 
within  the  Unitarian  pale  terrified  the  main  body, 
many  of  whom  were  mere  Arians,  holding  by  the  term 
Trinity,  and  merely  making  the  Son  subordinate  to  the 
Father.  Thus  when  one  of  their  most  learned  ministers, 
Simon  Budny,  followed  in  the  steps  of  Ferencz  Davides 
(whom  we  have  seen  dying  in  prison  in  Transylvania  in 
1579)  and  represented  Jesus  as  a  "mere"  man,  he  was 
condemned  by  a  synod  (1582)  and  deposed  from  his 
office  (1584).  He  recanted,  and  was  reinstated,'  but  his 
adherents  seem  to  have  been  excommunicated.  The 
sect  thus  formed  were  termed  Semi-Judaizers  by  another 
heretic,  Martin  Czechowicz,  who  himself  denied  the 
pre-existence  of  Jesus,  and  made  him  only  a  species  of 
demigod  \'^  yet  Fausto  Sozzini,  better  known  as  Faustus 
Socinus,  who  also  wrote  against  them,  and  who  had 
worked  with  Biandrata  to  have  Davides  imprisoned, 
conceded  that  prayer  to  Christ  was  optional. 3 

Faustus,  who  arrived  in  Poland  in  1579,  seems  to 
have  been  moved  to  his  strenuously  "  moderate  "  policy, 
which  for  a  time  unified  the  bulk  of  the  party,  mainly 
by  a  desire  to  keep  on  tolerable  terms  with  Protestantism. 
That,  however,  did  not  serve  him  with  the  Catholics  ; 
and  when  the  reaction  set  in  he  suffered  severely  at 
their  hands.  His  treatise,  De  Jesu  Christit  Servatore^ 
created  bitter  resentment;  and  in  1598  the  Catholic 
rabble  of  Cracow,  led  "  as  usual  by  the  students  of  the 

'  Krasinski,  Ref.  in  Poland,  1840,  ii,  363  ;   Mosheim,  16  Cent.  sec.  iii, 
Pt.  ii,  ch.  iv,  §  22.      Budny  translated  the  Bible,  with  rationalistic  notes. 
^  Krasinski,  p.  361.  3  Mosheim,  last  cit.  §  23,  note  4. 


56  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


university,"  dragged  him  from  his  house.  His  life  was 
saved  only  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  the  rector  and 
two  professors  of  the  university  ;  and  his  library  was 
destroyed,  with  his  manuscripts,  whereof  "  he  particu- 
larly regretted  a  treatise  which  he  had  composed  against 
the  atheists";^  though  it  is  not  recorded  that  the 
atheists  had  ever  menaced  either  his  life  or  his  property. 
He  seems  to  have  been  zealous  against  all  heresy  save 
his  own,  preaching  passive  obedience  in  politics  as 
emphatically  as  any  churchman,  and  condemning  alike 
the  rising  of  the  Dutch  against  Spanish  rule  and  the 
resistance  of  the  French  Protestants  to  their  kino-.- 

This  attitude  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the 
better  side  of  the  ethical  doctrines  of  the  sect,  which 
leant  considerably  to  non-resistance.  Czechowicz  (who 
was  deposed  by  his  fellow-Socinians  for  schism)  seems 
not  only  to  have  preached  a  patient  endurance  of  injuries, 
but  to  have  meant  it  y  and  to  the  Socinian  sect  belongs 
the  main  credit  of  setting  up  a  humane  compromise  on 
the  doctrine  of  eternal  punishment.-^  The  time,  of 
course,  had  not  come  for  any  favourable  reception  of 
such  a  compromise  in  Christendom  ;  and  it  is  noted  of 
the  German  Socinian,  Ernst  Schoner  (Sonerus),  who 
wrote  against  the  orthodox  dogma,  that  his  works  are 
"exceedingly  scarce.''^  Unitarianism  as  a  whole, 
indeed,  made  little  headway  outside  of  Poland  and 
Transylvania, 

In  Spain,  meantime,  there  was  no  recovery  from  the 
paralysis  wrought  by  the  combined  tyranny  of  church 
and  crown,  incarnate  in  the  Inquisition.  The  mon- 
strous multiplication  of  her  clergy  might  alone  have 
sufficed  to  set  up  stagnation   in   her  mental   life  ;  but, 

'   Krasinski,  p.  367  ;   Wallace,  Antitrin.  Biog.  1850,  ii,  320. 

=  Bayle,  art.  Fauste  Socin.    Krasinski,  p.  374. 

3  Krasinski,  pp.  361-2.  Fausto  Sozzini  also  could  apparenUy  forg-ive 
everybody  save  those  who  believed  less  than  he  did. 

•*  Cp.  the  inquiry  as  to  Locke's  Socinianism  in  J.  Milner's  Account  of 
Mr.  Lock's  Rdigion  out  of  his  07vn  Writings,  1706,  and  Lessing-'s  Zur 
Geschichte  und  Literatur,  i,  as  to  Leibnitz's  criticism  of  Sonerus. 

5  Enfield's  History  of  Philosophy  (an   abstract  of  Brucker),  ed.  1840 
P-  537- 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  57 

not  content  with  the  turning  of  a  vast  multitude'  of  men 
and  women  away  from  the  ordinary  work  of  life,  her 
rulers  set  themselves  to  expatriate  as  many  more  on 
the  score  of  heresy.  A  century  after  the  expul- 
sion of  the  Jews  came  the  turn  of  the  Moors,  whose 
last  hold  in  Spain,  Granada,  had  been  overthrown 
in  1492.  Within  a  generation  they  had  been 
deprived  of  all  exterior  practice  of  their  religion  ;^  but 
that  did  not  suffice,  and  the  Inquisition  never  left  them 
alone.  Harried,  persecuted,  compulsorily  baptised, 
deprived  of  their  Arabic  books,  they  repeatedly  revolted, 
only  to  be  beaten  down.  At  length,  in  the  opening 
years  of  the  seventeenth  century  (1610-1613),  under 
Philip  III,  on  the  score  that  the  great  Armada  had 
failed  because  heretics  were  tolerated  at  home,  it  was 
decided  to  expel  the  whole  race  ;  and  now  a  million 
Moriscoes,  among  the  most  industrious  inhabitants  of 
Spain,  were  driven  the  way  of  the  Jews.  It  is  needless 
here  to  recall  the  ruinous  effect  upon  the  material  life  of 
Spain  -J  the  aspect  of  the  matter  which  specially  con- 
cerns us  is  the  consummation  of  the  policy  of  killing  out 
all  intellectual  variation.  The  Moriscoes  mav  have 
counted  for  little  in  positive  culture  ;  but  they  were  one 
of  the  last  and  most  important  factors  of  variation  in 
the  country  ;  and  when  Spain  was  thus  successively 
denuded  of  precisely  the  most  original  and  energetic 
types  among  the  Jewish,  the  Spanish,  and  the  Moorish 
stocks,  her  mental  ruin  was  complete. 

To  modern  freethought,  accordingly,  she  has  till  our 
own  age  contributed  practically  nothing.  The  brilliant 
dramatic  literature  of  the  reigns  of  the  three  Philips, 
which  influenced  the  rising  drama  alike  of  France  and 


'  In  th^  dominions  of  Philip  II  there  are  said  to  have  been  58  arch- 
bishops, 684  bishops,  1 1,400  abbeys,  23,000  religfious  fraternities,  46,000 
monasteries,  13,500  nunneries,  312,000  secular  priests,  400,000  monks, 
200,000  friars  and  other  ecclesiastics.  H.  E.  Watts,  Miguel  de  Cer- 
vantes^ 1895,  pp.  67-68.      Spain  alone  had  9,088  monasteries. 

-  Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  ii,  484  ;   i-vol.  ed.  p.  564,  and  refs. 

3  Cp.  Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  ii,  497-9;  i-vol.  ed.  pp.  572-3  ;  La  Rigfaudiire, 
Hist,  des  Persic.  Relig.  en  Espagne,  i860,  pp.  220-6. 


58  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

England,  is  notably  unintellectual/  dealing  endlessly  in 
plot  and  adventure,  but  yielding  no  great  study  of 
character,  and  certainly  doingr  nothing  to  further  ethics. 
Calderon  was  a  thorough  fanatic,  and  became  a  priest  ;^ 
Lope  de  Vega  found  solace  under  bereavement  in 
zealously  performing  the  duties  of  an  Inquisitor  ;  and 
was  so  utterly  swayed  by  the  atrocious  creed  of  persecu- 
tion which  was  blighting  Spain  that  he  joined  in  the 
general  exultation  over  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes. 
Even  the  mind  of  Cervantes  had  not  on  this  side 
deepened  beyond  the  average  of  his  race  and  time  ;3  his 
old  wrongs  at  Moorish  hands  perhaps  warping  his 
better  judgment.  His  humorous  and  otherwise  kindly 
spirit,  so  incongruously  neighboured,  must  indeed 
have  counted  for  much  in  keeping  life  Sweet  in  Spain  in 
the  succeeding  centuries  of  bigotry  and  ignorance. 
But  from  the  seventeenth  century  till  the  other  day  the 
brains  were  out,  in  the  sense  that  genius  was  lacking. 
That  species  of  variation  had  been  too  effectually 
extirpated  during  two  centuries  to  assert  itself  until 
after  a  similar  duration  of  normal  conditions.  The 
"  immense  advantage  of  religious  unity,"  which  even  a 
modern  Spanish  historian-*  has  described  as  a  gain 
balancing  the  economic  loss  from  the  expulsion  of  the 
Moriscoes,  was  precisely  the  condition  of  minimum 
intellectual  activity — the  unity  of  stagnation. 

It  has  been  held  bv  one  historian  that  at  the  death  of 
Philip  II  there  arose  some  such  sense  of  relief  through- 
out Spain  as  was  felt  later  in  France  at  the  death  of 
Louis  XIV  ;  that  "the  Spaniards  now  ventured  to  sport 
with  the  chains  which  they  had  not  the  power  to  break"; 
and  that  Cervantes  profited  by  the  change  in  conceiving 

'  Cp.  Lewes,  Spanish  Drama,  passim. 

^  "  He  inspires  me  only  with   horror  for  the  faith  which   he   professes. 
No  one  ever  so  far  disfigured  Christianity,  no  one   ever  assigned  to   it 
passions  so  ferocious,  or  morals  so  corrupt  "  (Sismondi,  Lit.  of  South  of 
Europe^  Bohn  trans,  ii,  379). 

3  Ticknor,  Hist,  of  Spanish  Lit.,  6th   ed.  ii,  501  ;  Don   Ouixote,  Pt.  II, 
ch.  liv. 

■•  Lafuente,  Historia  de  Espana,  1856,  xvii,  340.      It  is  not  quite  certain 
that  Lafuente  expressed  his  sincere  opinion. 


POPULAR  THOUGHT  IN  EUROPE  59 

and  writing'  his  Don  Quixote.'  But  the  same  historian 
had  before  seen  that  "  poetic  freedom  was  circumscribed 
by  the  same  shackles  which  fettered  moral  liberty. 
Thoughts  which  could  not  be  expressed  without  fear  of 
the  dungeon  and  the  stake  were  no  longer  materials  for 
the    poet    to    work    on.      His    imagination,    instead    of 

improving  them  into  poetic  ideas had  to  be  taught 

to  reject  them.  But  the  eloquence  of  prose  was  more 
completely  bowed  down  under  the  inquisitorial  yoke 
than  poetry,  because  it  was  more  closely  allied  to  truth, 
which  of  all  things  was  the  most  dreaded."-  Cervantes, 
Lope  de  Vega,  and  Calderon  proved  that  within  the  iron 
wall  of  Catholic  orthodoxy,  in  an  age  when  conclusions 
were  but  slowly  being  tried  between  dogma  and  reason, 
there  could  be  a  vigorous  play  of  imaginative  genius  on 
the  field  of  human  nature  ;  even  as  in  Velasquez, 
sheltered  by  royal  favour,  the  genius  of  portraiture  could 
become  incarnate.  But  after  these  have  passed  away, 
the  laws  of  social  progress  are  revealed  in  the  defect  of 
all  further  Spanish  genius.  Even  of  Cervantes  it  is 
recorded — on  very  doubtful  authority,  however — that  he 
said  "  I  could  have  made  Don  Quixote  much  more 
amusing  if  it  were  not  for  the  Inquisition";  and  it 
is  matter  of  history  that  a  passage  in  his  book^ 
disparaging  perfunctory  works  of  charity  was  in  1619 
ordered  by  the  Holy  Office  to  be  expunged  as  impious 
and  contrary  to  the  faith.-*  When  the  total  intel- 
lectual life  of  a  nation  falls  ever  further  in  the  rear 
of  the  world's  movement,  even  the  imaginative  arts  are 
stunted.  Turkey  excepted,  the  civilised  nations  of 
Europe  which  for  two  centuries  have  contributed  the 
fewest  great  names  to  the  world's  bead-roll  have  been 


'  Boutervvek,  Hist,  of  Spanish  and  Portuguese  Literature,  Eng^.  trans. 
1823,  i,  331. 

-  Id.  p.  le^i.  3  Part  II,  ch.  xxxvi. 

■*  H.  E.  Watts,  Miguel  de  Cervantes,  p.  167.  Don  Quixote -was  "always 
under  suspicion  of  the  orthodox  "  Id.  p.  166.  Mr.  Watts,  saying- 
nothing-  of  Cervantes'  approval  of  the  expulsion  of  the  Moriscoes,  claims 
that  his  "head  was  clear  of  the  follies  and  extravagances  of  the  reigning 
superstition"  (Id.  p.  231). 


6o  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

—  - •» 

Spain,  Austria,  Portugal,  Belgium,  and  Greece,  all 
noted  for  their  "  religious  unity."  And  of  all  of  these 
Spain  is  the  supreme  instance  of  positive  decadence, 
she  having  exhibited  in  the  sixteenth  century  a  greater 
complex  of  energy  than  any  of  the  others/  The  lesson 
is  monumental. 

§  5.  Scientific  Thought. 

It  remains  to  trace  briefly  the  movement  of  scientific 
and  speculative  thought -which  constituted  the  transition 
between  the  Scholastic  and  the  modern  philosophy.  It 
may  be  compendiously  noted  under  the  names  of  Coper- 
nicus, Bruno,  Vanini,  Sanchez,  Galileo,  Ramus, 
Gassendi,  Bacon,  and  Descartes. 

The  great  performance  of  Copernicus,  given  to  the 
world  with  an  editor's  treacherous  preface  as  he  lay  or\. 
his  deathbed  in  1543,  did  not  become  a  general  posses- 
sion for  over  a  hundred  years.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  most 
momentous  challenge  that  had  been  offered  in  the 
modern  world  to  established  beliefs,  alike  theological 
and  lay,  for  ft  seemed  to  flout  "  common  sense  "  as  com- 
pletely as  it  did  the  cosmogony  of  the  sacred  books. 
Its  gradual  victory,  therefore,  is  the  first  great  instance 
of  a  triumph  of  reason  over  spontaneous  and  instilled 
prejudice  ;  and  Galileo's  account  of  his  reception  of  it 
should  be  a  classic  document  in  the  history  of 
rationalism.  It  was  when  he  was  a  student  in  his 
teens  that  there  came  to  Pisa  one  Christianus  Urstitius 
of  Rostock,  a  follower  of  Copernicus,  to  lecture  on  the 
new  doctrine.  The  young  Galileo,  being  satisfied  that 
"that  opinion  could  be  no  other  than  a  solemn  mad- 
ness," did  not  attend  ;  and  those  of  his  acquaintance 
who  did  made  a  jest  of  the  matter,  all  save  one,  "  very 
intelligent  and  wary,"  who  told  him  that  "  the  business 

'  Bouterwek,  whose  sociolog"y,  though  meritorious,  is  ill-clarified, 
argfues  that  the  Inquisition  was  in  a  manner  congenital  to  Spain  because 
before  its  establishment  the  suspicion  of  heresy  was  already  "  more 
deg-rading-  in  Spain  than  the  most  odious  crimes  in  other  countries." 
But  the  same  might  have  been  said  of  the  other  countries  also.  As  to 
earlier  Spanish  heresy  see  above,  vol.  i,  p.  382  sq. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  6i 

was  not  altogether  to  be  laughed  at."  Thenceforth  he 
began  to  inquire  of  Copernicans,  with  the  result 
inevitable  to  such  a  mind  as  his.  "  Of  as  many  as  I 
examined  I  found  not  so  much  as  one  who  told  me  not 
that  he  had  been  a  long  time  of  the  contrary  opinion, 
but  to  have  changed  it  for  this,  as  convinced  by  the 
strength  of  the  reasons  proving  the  same  ;  and  afterwards 
questioning  them  one  by  one,  to  see  whether  they  were 
well  possessed  of  the  reasons  of  the  other  side,  I  found 
them  all  to  be  very  ready  and  perfect  in  them,  so  that  I 
could  not  truly  say  that  they  took  this  opinion  out  of 
ignorance,  vanity,  or  to  show  the  acuteness  of  their 
wits."  On  the  other  hand,  the  opposing  Aristotelians 
and  Ptolomeans  had  seldom  even  superficially  studied 
the  Copernican  system,  and  had  in  no  case  been  con- 
verted from  it.  "  Whereupon,  considering  that  there 
was  no  man  who  followed  the  opinion  of  Copernicus  that 
had  not  been  first  on  the  contrary  side,  and  that  was  not 
very  well  acquainted  with  the  reasons  of  Aristotle  and 
Ptolemy,  while,  on  the  contrary,  there  was  not  one  of 
the  followers  of  Ptolemy  that  had  ever  been  of  the  judg- 
ment of  Copernicus,  and  had  left  that  to  embrace  this  of 
Aristotle,"  he  began  to  realise  how  strong  must  be  the 
reasons  that  thus  drew  men  away  from  beliefs  "  imbibed 
with  their  milk."'  We  can  divine  how  slow  would  be 
the  progress  of  a  doctrine  which  could  only  thus  begin 
to  find  its  way  into  one  of  the  most  gifted  scientific 
minds  of  the  modern  world.  It  was  only  the  elite  of  the 
intellectual  life  who  could  at  first  receive  it. 

The  doctrine  of  the  earth's  two-fold  motion,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  actually  been  taught  in  the  fifteenth  century  by 
Nicolaus  of  Cusa  (1401-64),  who,  instead  of  being  prosecuted, 
was  made  a  cardinal,  so  little  was  the  question  then  con- 
sidered (Ueberweg',  ii,  23-24).  See  above,  vol.  i,  p.  358,  as  to 
Pulci.  Only  very  slowly  did  the  work  even  of  Copernicus  make 
its  impression.  Mr.  Green  {Short  History,  ed.  1881,  p.  297) 
makes  first  the  blunder  of  stating  that  it  influenced  thought  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  then  the  further  mistake  of  saying 
that  it  was  brought  home  to  the  general  intelligence  by  Galileo 

'  Galileo,  Dialogi  sui  Sistcmi  del  Hondo,  ii  {Operc,  ed.  iSii,  xi,  303-4). 


62  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

and  Kepler  in  the  later  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  {Id. 
p.  412).  Galileo's  European  notoriety  dates  from  1616  ;  his 
Dialogues  of  the  Tivo  Systems  of  the  World  appeared  only  in 
1632;  and  his  Dialogues  of  the  New  Sciences  in  1638.  Kepler's 
indecisive  Mysterium  Cosmographicum  appeared  only  in  1597  ; 
his  treatise  on  the  motions  of  the  planet  Mars  not  till  1609. 

One  of  the  first  to  bring  the  new  cosmological  con- 
ception to  bear  on  philosophic  thought  was  Giordano 
Bruno  (i  548-1 600),  whose  life  and  death  of  lonely- 
chivalry  have  won  him  his  place  as  the  typical  martyr 
of  modern  freethought.'  He  may  be  conceived  as  a 
blending  of  the  pantheistic  and  naturalistic  lore  of 
ancient  Greece,-  assimilated  through  the  Florentine 
Platonists,  with  the  spirit  of  modern  science  (itself 
a  revival  of  the  Greek)  as  it  first  takes  firm  form  in 
Copernicus,  whose  doctrine  Bruno  early  and  ardently 
embraced.  Baptised  Filippo,  he  took  Giordano  as  his 
cloister-name  when  he  entered  the  great  convent  of 
S.  Domenico  Maggiore  at  Naples  in  1563,  in  his  fifteenth 
year.  No  human  being  was  ever  more  unfitly  placed 
among  the  Dominicans,  punningly  named  the  "hounds 
of  the  Lord  "  {domini  canes)  for  their  work  as  the  corps 
of  the  Inquisition  ;  and  very  early  in  his  cloister  life  he 
came  near  being  formally  proceeded  against  for  showing 
disregard  of  sacred  images,   and   making  light  of  the 

'  A  g-ood  study  of  Bruno  is  supplied  by  Mr.  Owen  in  his  Skeptics  (f  the 
Italian  Renaissance.  He  has,  however,  omitted  to  embody  the  later 
discoveries  of  Dufour  and  Berti,  and  has  some  wrong-  dates.  Mrs. 
Frith's  Life  of  Giordano  Bruno  {1887)  g-ives  all  the  data,  but  is  uncritical 
on  the  philosophic  side.  A  competent  estimate  is  given  in  the  late 
Professor  Adamson's  lectures  on  The  Development  of  Modern  Philo- 
sophy, etc.,  1903,  vol.  ii,  p.  23  sq.  ;  also  in  his  art.  in  Encyc. 
Brit.  For  a  hostile  view  see  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  as  cited, 
ii,  105-1 1 1.  The  biogfraphy  of  M.  Bartholmess,  fordano  Bru7io, 
1846,  is  extremely  full  and  sympathetic,  but  unavoidably  loose  as  to 
dates.  Much  new  matter  has  since  been  collected,  for  which  see  the 
Vita  di  Giordano  Bruno  of  Domenico  Berti,  rev.  and  enlarged  ed.  1889, 
and  the  doctoral  treatise  of  C.  Sigwart,  Die  Lebensgeschichte  Giordano 
Brunos,  Tubingen,  1880.  For  otlier  authorities  see  Mr.  Owen's  and 
Mrs.  Frith's  lists,  and  the  final  Literaturnachweis  in  Gustav  Louis's 
Giordano  Bruno,  seine  Weltanschauung  unci  Lebensverfassung,  Berlin, 
1900.  The  study  of  Bruno  has  been  carried  further  in  Germany  than  in 
England;  but  Mr.  Whittaker  {Essays  and  Notices,  1895)  makes  up  much 
leeway. 

^  Cp.  Bartholmess,  i,  49-53  ;  Lange,  Gesch.  des  Mater,  i,  191-4  (Eng-. 
trans,  i,  232);  Gustav  Louis,  as  cited,  pp.  11,  88. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  63 

sanctity  of  the  Virgin.'  He  passed  his  novitiate,  how- 
ever, without  further  trouble,  and  was  fully  ordained  a 
priest  in  1572,  in  his  twenty-fourth  year.  Passing  then 
though  several  Neapolitan  monasteries  during  a  period 
of  three  years,  he  seems  to  have  become  not  a  little  of  a 
freethinker  on  his  return  to  his  first  cloister,  as  he  had 
already  reached  Arian  opinions  in  regard  to  Christ,  and 
soon  proceeded  to  substitute  a  mystical  and  Pytha- 
gorean for  the  orthodox  view  of  the  Trinity. "" 

For  the  second  time  a  "  process  "  was  begun  against 
him,  and  he  took  flight  to  Rome  (1576),  presenting 
himself  at  a  convent  of  his  Order.  News  speedily  came 
from  Naples  of  the  process  against  him,  and  of  the 
discovery  that  he  had  possessed  a  volume  of  the  works  of 
Chrysostom  and  Jerome  with  the  scholia  of  Erasmus — a 
prohibited  thing.  Only  a  few  months  before  Bartolomeo 
Carranza,  Bishop  of  Toledo,  who  had  won  the  praise  of 
the  Council  of  Trent  for  his  index  of  prohibited  books, 
had  been  condemned  to  abjure  for  the  doctrine  that  "the 
worship  of  the  relics  of  the  saints  is  of  human  insti- 
tution," and  had  died  in  the  same  year  at  the  convent  to 
which  Brunohad  nowgone.  Thusdoubly  warned,  he  threw 
off  his  priestly  habit,  and  fled  to  the  Genoese  territory, ^ 
where,  in  the  commune  of  Noli,  he  taught  grammar  and 
astronomy.  In  1578  he  visited  successively  Turin, 
Venice,  Padua,  Bergamo,  and  Milan,  resuming  at  the 
last-named  town  his  monk's  habit.  Thereafter  he  again 
returned  to  Turin,  passing  thence  to  Chambery  at  the 
end  of  1578,  and  thence  to  Geneva  early  in  1579.'*  His 
wish,  he  said,  was  "  to  live  in  liberty  and  security,"  but 
for  that  he  must  first  renounce  his  Dominican  habit,  other 
Italian  refugees,  of  whom  there  were  many  at  Geneva, 
helping  him  to  a  layman's  suit.  Becoming  a  corrector 
of  the  press,  he  seems  to  have  conformed  externally  to 

'  Berti,   Vita  di  Giorda>io  Bruno,    1889,  pp.  40-41,  420.       Bruno  gives 
the  facts  in  his  own  narrative  before  the  Inquisitors  at  Venice. 
=  Id.  pp.  42-43,  47  ;  Owen,  p.  265. 
3  Not  to  Genoa,  as  Berti  stated  in  his  first  ed.      See  ed.  1889,  pp.  54, 

392. 

•*  Berti,  p.  65.     Mr.  Owen  has  the  uncorrected  date,  1576. 


64  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Calvinism  ;  but  after  a  stay  of  two  and  a  half  months  he 
published  a  short  diatribe  against  one  Antonio  de  La 
Faye,  who  professed  philosophy  at  the  Academy  ;  and 
for  this  he  was  arrested  and  sentenced  to  excommunica- 
tion, while  his  bookseller  was  subjected  to  one  day's 
imprisonment  and  a  fine.'  After  three  weeks  the  excom- 
munication was  raised  ;  but  he  nevertheless  left  Geneva, 
and  afterwards  spoke  of  Calvinism  as  the  "Reformed 
religion."  After  a  few  weeks'  sojourn  at  Lyons  he  went 
to  Toulouse,  the  very  centre  of  inquisitional  orthodoxy, 
and  there,  strangely  enough,  he  was  able  to  stay  for  more 
than  a  year,^  taking  his  degree  as  Master  of  Arts,  and 
becoming  professor  of  astronomy.  But  the  civil  wars 
made  Toulouse  unsafe  ;  and  at  length,  probably  in  1581 
or  1582,  he  reached  Paris,  where  for  a  time  he  lectured 
as  professor  extraordinary.^  In  1583  he  reached 
England,  where  he  remained  till  1585,  lecturing, 
debating  at  Oxford  on  the  Copernican  theory,  and 
publishing  a  number  of  his  works,  four  of  them 
dedicated  to  his  patron  Castelnau,  the  French  ambas- 
sador. He  had  met  Sir  Philip  Sidney  at  Milan  in  1578; 
and  his  dialogue,  C^-w^  de  le  Ceneri,  gives  a  vivid  account 
of  a  discussion  in  which  he  took  a  leading  part  at  a 
banquet  given  by  Sir  Fulke  Greville.  His  picture  of 
"  Oxford  ignorance  and  English  ill-manners  "-^  is  not 
lenient  ;  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  his 
doctrine  was  then  assimilated  by  many  ;5  but  his  stay  in 
the  household  of  Castlenau  was  one  of  the  happiest 
periods  of  his  chequered  life.  While  in  England  he 
wrote  no  fewer  than  seven  works,  four  of  them  dedicated 

'  Dufour,  Giordano  Bruno  a  Geneve:  Documents  Inedits,  1884;  Berti, 
pp.  95-97  ;  Gustav  Louis,  Giordano  Bruno,  pp.  73-75-  Mr.  Owen 
(p.  269)  has  overlooked  these  facts,  set  forth  by  Dufour  in  1884.  The 
documents  are  given  in  full  in  Mrs.  Frith's  Zz/t',  1887,  p.  60  sq. 

2  The  dates  are  in  doubt.      Cp.  Berti,  p.  115,  and  Mrs.  Frith,  p.  65. 

3  See  his  own  narrative  before  the  Inquisitors  in  1592.      Berti,  p.  394. 

4  Mrs.  Frith's  Life,  p.  121,  and  refs.  ;  Owen,  p.  275;  Bartholmess, 
Jordano  Bruno,  \,  136-8. 

s  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  ii,  iii,  note.  As  to  Bruno's  supposed 
influence  on  Bacon  and  Shakspere,  cp.  Bartholmess,  i,  134-5  '■>  Mrs. 
Frith's  Life,  pp.  104-8  ;  and  the  author's  Montaigne  and  Shakspere, 
pp.  82-7. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  6 


D 


to  Castlenau,  and  two — -the  Heroic  Fervours  and  the  Ex- 
pulsion of  the  Triumphant  Beast — to  Sir  Philip  Sidney. 
Returning  to  Paris  on  the  recall  of  Castlenau  in  1585, 
he  made  an  attempt  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  church, 
but  it  was  fruitless;  and  thereafter  he  went  his  own  way. 
After  a  public  disputation  at  the  university  in  1586,  he 
set  out  on  a  new  peregrination,  visiting  first  Mayence, 
Marburg,  and  Wittemberg.  At  Marburg  he  was 
refused  leave  to  debate  ;  and  at  Wittemberg  he  seems  to 
have  been  carefully  conciliatory,  as  he  not  only  matricu- 
lated, but  taught  for  over  a  year  (1586-88),  till  the 
Calvinist  party  carried  the  day  over  the  Lutheran.' 
Thereafter  he  reached  Prague,  Helmstadt,  Frankfort, 
and  Zurich.  At  length,  on  the  fatal  invitation  of  the 
Venetian  youth  Mocenigo,  he  re-entered  Italian 
territory,  where,  in  Venice,  he  was  betrayed  to  the 
Inquisition  by  his  treacherous  and  worthless  pupil. 

What  had  been  done  for  freethought  by  Bruno  in  his 
fourteen  years  of  wandering,  debating,  and  teaching 
through  Europe  it  is  impossible  to  estimate  ;  but  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  he  was  one  of  the  most  powerful  antagonists  to 
orthodox  unreason  that  had  yet  appeared.  Of  all  men 
of  his  time  he  had  perhaps  the  least  affinity  with  the 
Christian  creed,  which  was  repellent  to  him  alike  in  the 
Catholic  and  the  Protestant  versions.  The  attempt  to 
prove  him  a  believer  on  the  strength  of  a  non-autograph 
manuscript-  is  idle.  In  the  Spaccio  delta  bestia  trion- 
fante  he  derides  the  notion  of  a  union  of  divine  and 
human  natures,  and  substantially  proclaims  a  natural 
(theistic)  religion,  negating  all  "  revealed "  religions 
alike.  Where  Boccaccio  had  accredited  all  the  three 
leading  religions,  Bruno  disallows  all  with  paganism, 
though   he    puts    that    above    Christianity. ^      And    his 

'  His  praise  of  Luther,  and  his  conipHments  to  the  Lutherans,  are  in 
notable  contrast  to  his  verdict  on  Calvinism.  What  happened  was  that 
at  Wittemberg-  he  was  on  his  best  behaviour,  and  was  well  treated 
accordingly. 

-  Noroff,  as  cited  by  Mrs.  Frith,  p.  345. 

3  Cp.  Berti,  pp.  187-8;  Whittaker,  Essays  and  Notices,  1895,  p.  89; 
and  Louis's  section,  Stellung  zu  Christent]ium  und  Kirche. 

VOL.  II  F 


66  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

disbelief  grew  more  stringent  with  his  years.  Among 
the  heretical  propositions  charged  against  him  by 
the  Inquisition  were  these  :  that  there  is  transmigra- 
tion of  souls  ;  that  magic  is  right  and  proper  ;  that  the 
Holy  Spirit  is  the  same  thing  as  the  soul  of  the  world  ; 
that  the  world  is  eternal  ;  that  Moses,  like  the  Egyp- 
tians, wrought  miracles  by  magic  ;  that  the  sacred 
writings  are  but  a  romance  {sogiio)  ;  that  the  devil  will 
be  saved  ;  that  only  the  Hebrews  are  descended  from 
Adam,  other  men  having  descended  from  progenitors 
created  by  God  before  Adam  ;  that  Christ  was  not  God, 
but  was  a  notorious  sovcqvqt  {insigiie  mago),  who,  having 
deceived  men,  was  deservedly  hanged,  not  crucified  ; 
that  the  prophets  and  the  apostles  were  bad  men  and 
sorcerers,  and  that  many  of  them  were  hanged  as  such. 
A  number  of  these  propositions  are  professedly  drawn, 
always,  of  course,  by  forcing  his  language,  but  not  with- 
out some  colourable  pretext,  from  his  two  "poems," 
De  triplice,  miiiimo,  et  meiisura,  and  De  moiiade, 
numero  et  figiiya^  published  at  Frankfort  in  1591,  in  the 
last  year  of  his  freedom.' 

Alike  in  the  details  of  his  propaganda  and  the  temper 
of  his  utterance,  he  expresses  from  first  to  last  the  spirit 
of  freethought  and  free  speech.  Libertas  philosophica'^ 
is  the  breath  of  his  nostrils  ;  and  by  his  life  and  his 
death  alike  he  upholds  the  ideal  for  men  as  no  other 
before  him  did.  The  wariness  of  Rabelais  and  the  non- 
committal skepticism  of  Montaigne  are  alike  alien  to 
him  ;  he  is  too  lacking  in  reticence,  too  explosive,  to 
pfive  due  heed  even  to  the  common-sense  amenities  of 
life,  much  more  to  hedge  his  meaning  with  safeguarding 
qualifications.  And  it  was  doubtless  as  much  by  the 
contagion  of  his  mood  as  by  his  lore  that  he  impressed 
men. 

'  Berti,  pp.  297-8.  It  takes  much  searchingf  in  the  two  poems  to  find 
the  ideas  in  question,  and  Berti  has  attempted  no  collation  ;  but,  allow- 
ing for  distortions,  the  Inquisition  has  sufficient  ground  for  outcry. 

^  In  the  treatise  De  Lampade  combinatorin  LulUana  (1587).  Accord- 
ing- to  Berti  (p.  220)  he  is  the  first  to  employ  this  phrase,  which  becomes 
the  watchword  of  Spinoza  {lihcrtas  philosophaiidi)  a  century  later. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  67 

His  personal  and  literary  influence  was  probably  most 
powerful  in  respect  of  his  eager  propaganda  of  the 
Copernican  doctrine,  which  he  of  his  own  force  vitally 
expanded  and  made  part  of  a  pantheistic  conception  of 
the  universe.'  Where  Copernicus  adhered  by  implica- 
tion to  the  idea  of  an  external  and  limitary  sphere — the 
last  of  the  eight  of  the  Ptolemaic  theory — Bruno  reverted 
boldly  to  the  doctrine  of  Anaxarchos,  and  declared  firmly 
for  the  infinity  of  space  and  of  the  series  of  the  worlds. 
In  regard  to  biology  he  makes  an  equivalent  advance, 
starting  from  the  thought  of  Empedocles  and  Lucretius, 
and  substituting  an  idea  of  natural  selection  for  that  of 
creative  providence.-  The  conception  is  definitely 
thought  out,  and  marks  him  as  one  of  the  renovators 
of  scientific  no  less  than  of  philosophic  thought  for  the 
modern  world  ;  though  the  special  paralysis  of  science 
under  Christian  theology  kept  his  ideas  on  this  side 
pretty  much  a  dead  letter  for  his  own  day.  And  indeed 
it  was  to  the  universal  and  not  the  particular  that  his 
thought  chiefly  and  most  enthusiastically  turned.  A 
philosophic  poet  rather  than  a  philosopher  or  man  of 
science,  he  yet  set  abroad  for  the  modern  Avorld  that 
conception  of  the  physical  infinity  of  the  universe  which, 
once  psychologically  assimilated,  makes  an  end  of  the 
medieval  theory  of  things.  On  this  head  he  was  eagerly 
aflirmative  ;  and  the  merely  Pyrrhonic  skeptics  he 
assailed  as  he  did  the  "asinine"  orthodox,  though  he 
insisted  on  doubt  as  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

Of  his  extensive  literary  output  not  much  is  stamped 
with  lasting  scientific  fitness  or  literary  charm  ;  and 
some  of  his  treatises,  as  those  on  mnemonics,  have  no 
more  value  than  the  product  of  his  didactic  model, 
Raymond  Lully.     As  a  writer  he  is  at  his  best  in  the 


'  Berti.  cap.  iv  ;  Owen,  p.  249  ;  Ueberweg,  ii,  27  ;  Piinjer,  p.  93  sq.  ; 
Whittaker,  Essays  and  Notices,  1895,  p.  66.  As  to  Bruno's  debt  to 
Nicolaus  of  Cusa  cp.  Gustav  Louis,  as  cited,  p.  11;  Piinjer,  as  cited  ; 
Carriere,  Die  philosophische  Weltanschauung  der  Reformationsseit,  p.  25  ; 
and  Whittaker,  p.  68.  The  argument  of  Carriere's  second  edition  is 
analysed  and  rebutted  by  Mr.  Whittaker,  p.  253  sq. 

-  De  Iminenso,  vii,  c.  18,  cited  by  Whittaker,  Essays  and  Notices,  p.  70. 


68  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOVGHT 

sweeping  expatiation  of  his  more  general  philosophic 
treatises,  where  he  attains  a  lifting  ardour  of  inspiration, 
a  fervour  of  soaring  outlook,  that  puts  him  in  the  front 
rank  of  the  thinkers  of  his  age.  And  if  his  literary- 
character  is  at  times  open  to  severe  criticism  in  respect 
of  his  lack  of  balance,  sobriety,  and  self-command,  his 
final  courage  atones  for  such  shortcomings. 

His  case,  indeed,  serves  to  remind  us  that  at  certain 
junctures  it  is  only  the  unbalanced  types  that  aid 
humanity's  advance.  The  perfectly  prudent  and  self- 
sufficing  man  does  not  achieve  revolutions,  does  not 
revolt  against  tyrannies  :  he  wisely  adapts  himself  and 
subsists,  letting  the  evil  prevail  as  it  may.  It  is  the 
more  impatient  and  unreticent,  the  eager  and  hot- 
brained — in  a  word,  the  faulty — who  clash  with  oppression 
and  break  a  way  for  quieter  spirits  through  the  hedges 
of  enthroned  authority.  The  serenely  contemplative 
spirit  is  rather  a  possession  than  a  possessor  for  his 
fellows  :  he  may  inform  and  enlighten,  but  is  not  in 
himself  a  countering  or  inspiriting  force  :  a  Shelley 
avails  more  than  a  Goethe  against  tyrannous  power. 
And  it  may  be  that  the  battling  enthusiast  in  his  own 
way  wins  liberation  for  himself  from  "fear  of  fortune  and 
death,"  as  he  wins  for  others  liberty  of  action.'  Even 
such  a  liberator,  bearing  other  men's  griefs  and  taking 
stripes  that  they  might  be  kept  whole,  was  Bruno. 

And  when  the  end  came  he  vindicated  human  nature 
as  worthily  as  could  any  quietist.  Charged  on  the 
traitor's  testimony  with  many  "  blasphemies,"  he  denied 
them  all,-  but  stood  to  his  published  writings''  and 
vividlyjexpounded  his  theories, •♦  professing  in  the  usual 
manner  to  believe  in  conformity  with  the  church's 
teachings,  whatever  he  might  write  on  philosophy.  It 
is  impossible  to  trust  the  Inquisition  records  as  to  his 

'  As  to  Bruno's  own  claim  in  the  Eroici  Furori,  cp.  Whittaker,  Essays 
and  Notices,  p.  90. 

^  Documents  in  Berti,  pp.  407-418. 

3  See  the  document  in  Berti,  p.  398  sq. ;  Mrs.  Frith's  Life,  pp. 
270-281. 

■•  Berti,  p.  400  sq. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  69 

words  of  self-humiliation;'  though  on  the  other  hand  no 
blame  can  rationally  attach  to  anyone  who,  in  his  place, 
should  try  to  deceive  such  enemies,  morally  on  a  level 
with  hostile  savages  seeking  one's  life.  It  is  certain 
that  the  Inquisitors  frequently  wrung  recantations  by 
torture. - 

What  is  historically  certain  is  that  Bruno  was  not 
released,  but  sent  on  to  Rome,  and  was  kept  there  in 
prison  for  seven  years.  He  was  not  the  sort  of  heretic 
likely  to  be  released  ;  though  the  fact  of  his  being  a 
Dominican,  and  the  desire  to  maintain  the  church's 
intellectual  credit,  delayed  so  long  his  execution. 
Certainly  not  an  atheist  (he  called  himself  in  several 
of  his  book-titles  Philotheits ;  and  his  quasi-pantheism 
or  monism  often  lapses  into  theistic  modes), ^  he  yet  was 
from  first  to  last  essentially  though  not  professedly  anti- 
Christian  in  his  view  of  the  universe.  If  the  Church 
had  cause  to  fear  any  philosophic  teaching,  it  was  his, 
preached  with  the  ardour  of  a  prophet  and  the  eloquence 
of  a  poet.  His  doctrine  that  the  worlds  in  space  are 
innumerable  was  as  offensive  to  orthodox  ears  as  his 
specific  negations  of  Christian  dogma,  outgoing  as  it  did 
the  later  idea  of  Kepler  and  Galileo.  He  had,  moreover, 
finally  refused  to  make  any  fresh  recantation  ;  and  the 
only  detailed  document  extant  concerning  his  final  trial 
describes  him  as  saying  to  his  judges  :  ''  With  more 
fear,  perchance,  do  you  pass  sentence  on  me  than  I 
receive  it."  According  to  all  accessible  records,  he  was 
burned  alive  at  Rome  in  February,  1600,  in  the  Field  of 
Flowers,  near  where  his  statue  now  stands. 

An   attempt  has   been    made   by  Professor  Desdouits  in  a 
pamphlet  (Za  legende  tragique  de  Jordano  Bruno:  Paris,  1885) 

'   See  Berti,  p.  396;  Owen,  pp.  285-6;   Mrs.  Frith,  pp.  282-3. 

-  The  controversy  as  to  whether  GaHleo  was  tortured  leaves  it  clear 
that  torture  was  common.  See  Dr.  Parchappe,  Galilee,  sa  vie,  etc., 
1866,  Ptie.  ii,  ch.  7. 

3  Professor  Carriere  has  contended  that  a  transition  from  pantheism  to 
theism  marks  the  growth  of  his  thoug-ht  ;  but,  as  is  shown  by  Mr. 
Whittaker,  he  is  markedly  pantheistic  in  his  latest  work  of  all,  thoug-h 
his  pantheism  is  not  merelv  naturalistic.  Essays  and  Notices,  pp.  72, 
253-8. 


70  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

to  show  that  there  is  wo  evidence  that  Bruno  was  burned  ;  and 
an  anonymous  writer  in  the  Scottish  Review  (October,  1888, 
Art.  II),  rabidly  hostile  to  Bruno,  has  maintained  the  same 
proposition.  Doubt  on  the  subject  dates  from  Bayle.  Its  main 
g^round  is  the  fewness  of  the  documentary  records,  of  which, 
further,  the  genuineness  is  now  called  in  question.  But  no 
good  reason  is  shown  for  doubting'  them.  They  are  three  in 
number. 

1.  The  Latin  letter  of  Caspar  Schopp  (Scioppius),  dated 
February  17,  1600,  is  an  eye-witness's  account  of  the  sentencing 
and  burning  of  Bruno  at  that  date.  (See  it  in  full,  in  the 
original  Latin,  in  Berti,  p.  461  sq.  and  in  App.  V  to  Mrs. 
Frith's  Life  of  Bruno,  and  partly  translated  in  Professor  Adam- 
son's  lectures,  as  cited.)  It  was  not  printed  till  1621,  but  the 
grounds  urged  for  its  rejection  are  totally  inadequate,  and 
involve  assumptions,  which  are  themselves  entirely  unproved, 
as  to  what  Scioppius  was  likely  to  do.  Finally,  no  intelligible 
reason  is  suggested  for  the  forging  of  such  a  document.  The 
remarks  of  Professor  Desdouits  on  this  head  have  no  force 
whatever.  The  writer  in  the  Scottish  Revicu'  (p.  263,  and  note) 
suggests  as  "at  least  as  possible  an  hypothesis  as  any  other 
that  he  [Bruno]  was  the  author  of  the  forged  accounts  of  his 
own  death."  Such  are  the  conceptions  offered  as  substitutes 
for  the  existing  view. 

2.  There  are  preserved  two  extracts  from  a  Roman  news- 
letter {Avvisa)  of  the  time  ;  one,  dated  February  12th,  1600, 
commenting  on  the  case  ;  the  other,  dated  February  19th, 
relating  the  execution  on  tlie  17th.  (See  both  in  S.  R.  pp. 
264-5.  They  were  first  printed  by  Signor  Berti  in  Dociimcnti 
intomo  a  Giordano  Bruno,  Rome,  1880,  and  are  reprinted  in 
his  Vita,  ed.  i88g,  cap.  xix.)  Against  these  testimonies  the  sole 
plea  is  that  they  mis-state  Bruno's  opinions  and  the  duration  of 
his  imprisonment — a  test  which  would  reduce  to  mythology  the 
contents  of  most  newspapers  in  our  own  day.  The  writer  in 
the  Scottish  Review  makes  the  suicidal  suggestion  that,  inas- 
much as  the  errors  as  to  dates  occur  in  Schopp's  letter,  "  the 
so-called  Schopp  was  fabricated  from  these  notices,  or  they 
from  Schopp  " — thus  admitting  that  one  ranked  as  a  historical 
document. 

3.  There  has  been  found,  by  a  Catholic  investigator,  a 
double  entry  in  the  books  of  the  Lay  Brotherhood  of  San 
Giovanni  DecoUato,  whose  function  was  to  minister  to  prisoners 
under  capital  sentence,  giving  a  circumstantial  account  of 
Bruno's  execution.  (See  it  in  S.  R.  pp.  266,  269,  270.)  In 
this  case,  the  main  entry  being  dated  "  1600.  Thursday. 
February  i6th,"  the  anonymous  writer  argues  that  "  the  whole 


SCIEXTIFIC  THOUGHT  71 

tliini^  resolves  itself  into  a  make-up,"  because  February  i6th 
was  the  Wednesday.  The  entry  refers  to  the  procedure  of  the 
Wednesday  nig-ht  and  the  Thursday  morning  ;  and  such  an 
error  could  easily  occur  in  any  case.  Whatever  may  be  one 
day  proved,  the  cavils  thus  far  count  for  nothing.  All  the 
while,  the  records  as  to  Bruno  remain  in  the  hands  of  the 
Catholic  authorities  ;  but,  despite  the  discredit  constantly  cast 
on  the  church  on  the  score  of  Bruno's  execution,  they  offer  no 
official  denial  of  the  common  statement  ;  while  they  do  officially 
admit  {S.  J\.  p.  252)  that  on  February  8th  Bruno  was  sentenced 
as  an  "obstinate  heretic,"  and  "given  over  to  the  Secular 
Court."  On  the  other  hand,  the  episode  is  well  vouched  ;  and 
the  argument  from  the  silence  of  ambassadors'  letters  is  so  far 
void.  No  pretence  is  made  of  tracing  Bruno  anywhere  after 
February,  iboo. 

Since  the  foregoing  note  appeared  in  the  first  edition  I  have 
met  with  the  essay  of  Mr.  R.  Copley  Christie,  "Was  Giordano 
Bruno  Reallv  Burned  ?"  {MacmiUan^s  Mag-aaine,  October,  1885  ; 
rep.  in  Mr.  Christie's  Selected  Essays  a7id  Papers,  1902)'.  This 
is  a  crushing  answer  to  the  thesis  of  M.  Desdouits,  showing 
as  it  does  clear  grounds  not  only  for  affirming  the  genuineness 
of  the  letter  of  Scioppius,  but  for  doubting  the  diligence  of 
M.  Desdouits.  Mr.  Christie  points  out  (i)  that  in  his  book 
Ecclesiasticus,  printed  in  1612,  Scioppius  refers  to  the  burning 
of  Bruno  almost  in  the  words  of  his  letter  of  1600  ;  (2)  that  in 
1607  Kepler  wrote  to  a  correspondent  of  the  burning  of  Bruno, 
giving  as  his  authority}.  M.  Wacker,  who  in  1600  was  living 
at  Rome  as  the  imperial  ambassador  ;  and  (3)  that  the  tract 
Machiavellatio,  1621,  in  which  the  letter  of  Scioppius  was  first 
printed,  was  well  known  in  its  day,  being  placed  on  the  Index, 
and  answered  by  two  writers  without  eliciting  any  repudiation 
from  Scioppius,  who  lived  till  1649.  x\s  M.  Desdouits  staked 
his  case  on  the  absence  of  allusions  to  the  subject  before  1661 
(overlooking  even  the  allusion  by  Mersenne,  in  1624,  cited  by 
Bayle),  his  theory  may  be  regarded  as  utterly  exploded. 

Bruno  has  been  zealously  blackened  by  Catholic 
writers  for  the  obscenity  of  some  of  his  writing'  and  the 
alleged  freedom  of  his  life — piquant  charges,  when  we 
remember  the  life  of  the  Papal  Italy  in  which  he  was 
born.  LuciLio  Vanini  (otherwise  Julius  Caesar  Vanini), 
the  next  martyr  of  freethought,  also  an  Italian  (b.  at 
Taurisano,  1585),  is  open  to  the  more  relevant  charges 
of  an  inordinate  vanity  and  some  duplicity.     Figuring 

'  Notably  his  comedy  //  Candclaio. 


72 


THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


as  a  Carmelite  friar,  which  he  was  not,  he  came  to 
England  (1612)  and  deceitfully  professed  to  abjure 
Catholicism,'  gaining,  however,  nothing  by  the  step,  and 
contriving  to  be  reconciled  to  the  church.  Previously 
he  had  figured,  like  Bruno,  as  a  wandering  scholar  at 
Amsterdam,  Brussels,  Cologne,  Geneva,  and  Lyons  ; 
and  afterwards  he  taught  natural  philosophy  for  a  year  at 
Genoa.  His  treatise,  Ampliitlieatrum  u.^ternce  Provi- 
dentice  (Lyons,  1615),  is  professedly  directed  against 
"  Atheists,  Epicureans,  Peripatetics,  and  Stoics,"  and 
is  ostensibly  quite  orthodox.-  As  usual,  it  leaves  us  in 
doubt  as  to  the  amount  of  real  atheism  current  at  the 
time.  The  preface  asserts  that  "  'A0£orr/ro  aittem  secta 
pestilentissima  qitotidie^  latins  et  latins  vires  acquirit 
eundo,''  and  there  are  various  allusions  to  atheists  in 
the  te'xt  ;3  but  their  arguments  are  such  as  might  be 
brought  by  deists  against  miracles  and  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  sin  ;  and  there  is  an  allusion  of  the 
customary  kind  to  '' Nicolaus  Machiavelliis  Atheonim 
facile  princeps,'"'^  which  puts  all  in  doubt.  The  later 
Dialogues,  while  discussing  many  questions  of  creed 
and  science  in  a  free  fashion,  no  less  profess  orthodoxy  ; 
and,  while  one  passage  is  pantheistic, ^  they  also  denounce 
atheism,  and  profess  faith  in  immortality.^  Other 
passages  imply  doubt  ;7  but  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
the  Dialogues  were  penned  not  by  Vanini,  but  by  his 
disciples  at  Paris,  he  only  tardily  giving  his  consent  to 
their  publication,^  And  whereas  one  passage  does 
avow   that  the  author  in  his  Ampliitlieatrum   had  said 


'  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  p.  357.  A  full  narrative, 
from  the  documents,  is  given  in  R.  C.  Christie's  essay,  "Vanini  in 
England,"  in  the  English  ^Historical  Revieiv  of  April,  1895,  reprinted  in 
his  Selected  Essays  and  Papers,  1902. 

=  See  it  analysed  by  Owen,  pp.  361-8,  and  by  Carriere,  Weltaii- 
schaiiung,  pp.  496-504. 

3  Amphitheatntm,  ed.  1615,  pp.    72,  73,   113,  etc. 

''  P-  35- 

5  See  Rousselot's  French  trans.   1842,  p.  227. 

*>  /a',  pp.  219-221.  '  E.g.,  pp.  347-8. 

^  Owen,  pp.  369,  370.  It  is  thus  possible  that  the  passages  on  the 
score  of  which  Vanini  is  charged  with  wild  conceit  were  not  written  by 
him  at  all. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  73 

many  things  he  did  not  believe,  the  context  clearly 
suggests  that  the  reference  was  not  to  the  main 
argument,  but  to  some  of  its  dubious  facts.'  In  any 
case,  Vanini  cannot  be  shown  to  be  an  atheist  ;"  and  the 
attacks  upon  him  as  an  immoral  writer  are  not  any 
better  supported. ^  The  publication  of  the  work  was  in 
fact  formally  authorised  by  the  Sorbonne,  and  it  does 
not  even  appear  that  when  he  was  charged  with  atheism 
and  blasphemy  at  Toulouse  that  work  was  at  all  founded 
on.-*  The  charges  rested  on  the  testimony  of  a 
treacherous  associate  as  to  his  private  conversation  ;  and 
if  true,  it  only  amounted  to  proving  his  pantheism, 
expressed  in  his  use  of  the  word  "Nature."  At  his  trial 
he  expressly  avowed  and  argued  for  theism.  Yet  he 
was  convicted, 5  and  burned  alive  (February  9th,  1619)  on 
the  day  of  his  sentence.  Drawn  on  a  hurdle,  in  his 
shirt,  with  a  placard  on  his  shoulders  inscribed  "Atheist 
and  Blasphemer  of  the  name  of  God,"  he  went  to  his 
death  with  a  high  heart,  rejoicing,  as  he  cried  in  Italian, 
to  die  like  a  philosopher.''  A  Catholic  historian,^  who 
was  present,  says  he  hardily  declared  that  "Jesus  facing 
death  sweated  with  fear:  I  die  undaunted."  But  before 
burning  him  they  tore  out  his  tongue  by  the  roots  ;  and 
the  Christian  historian  is  humorous  over  the  victim's 
long  cry  of  agony.^  No  martyr  ever  faced  death  with  a 
more  dauntless  courage  than  this 

'  Cp.  the  passages  cited  by  Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  ii,  461,  with  Mr.  Owen's 
defence,  p.  368,  note. 

-  Cp.  Carriere's  analysis  of  the  Dialogfues,  pp.  505-9. 

3  See  Mr.  Owen's  vindication,  pp.  371-4.  Renan's  criticism  {Averroks, 
pp.  420-3)  is  not  quite  judicial.  See  many  others  cited  by  Carriere, 
p.  516. 

■»  Owen,  p.  395. 

5  Personal  enmity  on  the  part  of  the  prosecuting  official  was  commonly 
held  to  explain  the  trial.     Owen,  p.  393  ;  Carriere,  p.  521. 

*  Mercure  Fran^ais,  1619,  tom.  v.  p.  64. 

7  Gramond  (Barthelemi  de  Grammont),  Historia  Gallics  ab  excessii 
Henri  IV,  1643,  p.  209.  Carriere  translates  the  passage  in  full, 
pp.  500-12,  515. 

^  Gramond,  p.  210.  Of  Vanini,  as  of  Bruno,  it  is  recorded  that  at  the 
stake  he  repelled  the  proffered  crucifix.  Mr.  Owen  and  other  writers, 
who  justly  remark  that  he  well  might,  overlook  the  once  received 
belief  that  it  was  the  official  practice,  with  obstinate  heretics,  to  proffer 
a  red-hot  crucifix,  so  that  the  victim  should  be  sure  to  spurn  it  with  open 
anger. 


74  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

Lonely  antagonist  of  Destiny 

That  went  down  scornful  before  many  spears  ;' 

and  if  the  man  had  all  the  faults  falsely  imputed  to  him^ 
his  death  might  shame  his  accusers. 

Contemporary  with  Bruno  and  Vanini  was  Sanchez, 
a  physician  of  Portuguese-Jewish  descent,  settled  as  a 
Professor  at  Toulouse,  who  contrived  to  publish  a 
treatise  (written  1576,  printed  1581)  affirming  "That 
Nothing  is  Known "  [Quod  Nihil  Scitiir)  without 
suffering  any  molestation.  It  is  a  formal  putting  of  the 
Pyrrhonist  skepticism  of  Montaigne,  which  is  thus  seen 
to  have  been  to  some  extent  current  before  he  wrote  ; 
but  there  is  no  sign  that  Sanchez'  formal  statement  had 
any  philosophic  influence,  save  perhaps  on  Descartes  in 
the  next  generation. ^  His  most  important  aspect  is  as  a 
thinker  on  natural  science  ;  and  here  he  is  really 
corrective  and  constructive  rather  than  Pyrrhonist  ;  his 
poem  on  the  comet  of  1577  being  one  of  the  earliest 
rational  utterances  on  the  subject  in  the  Christian 
period.-* 

But  it  was  with  Galileo  that  there  began  the  practical 
application  of  the  Copernican  theory  to  astronomy,  and, 
indeed,  the  decisive  demonstration  of  its  truth.  With 
him,  accordingly,  began  the  positive  rejection  of  the 
Copernican  theory  by  the  church  ;  for  thus  far  it  had 
never  been  officially  vetoed.  Almost  immediately  after 
the  publication  of  Galileo's  Sidereus  Nunc  ins  (16 10)  his 
name  is  found  in  the  papers  of  the  Inquisition,  with  that 


^  Stephen  Phillips,  Marpessa. 

-  Cp.  Owen,  pp.  389,  391,  and  Carriere,  pp.  512-13,  as  to  the  worst 
calumnies.  It  is  significant  that  Vanini  was  tried  solely  for  blasphemy 
and  atheism.  What  is  proved  against  him  is  that  he  and  an  associate 
practised  a  rather  gross  fraud  on  the  English  ecclesiastical  authorities, 
having  apparently  no  higher  motive  than  gain  and  a  free  life.  Mr. 
Christie  notes,  however,  that  \^anini  in  his  writings  always  speaks  very 
kindlj'  of  England  and  the  English,  and  so  did  not  add  ingratitude  to  his 
act  of  imposture. 

3  Cp.  Bartholm^ss,  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  rdig.  de  la  philos.  nioderne, 
1855,  i,  21-22. 

■*  See  Owen,  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance,  pp.  631-6 — a  fairer 
and  more  careful  estimate  than  that  of  Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  of  Europe,  ii, 
1 1 1- 1 13. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  75 


of  Cremonini  of  Padua,  as  a  subject  of  investigation/ 
The  juxtaposition  is  noteworthy.  Cremonini  was  an 
Aristotelian,  with  Averroist  leanings,  and  reputed  an 
atheist ;""  and  it  was  presumably  on  this  score  that  the 
Inquisition  was  looking  into  his  case.  At  the  same 
time,  as  an  Aristotelian  he  was  strongly  opposed  to 
Galileo,  and  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  those  who 
refused  to  look  through  Galileo's  telescope.^  Galileo, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  ostensibly  a  good  Catholic  ;  but 
his  discovery  of  the  moons  of  Jupiter  was  a  signal 
confirmation  of  the  Copsrnican  theory,  and  the  new 
status  at  once  given  to  that  made  a  corresponding 
commotion  in  the  church.  Thus  he  had  against  him  both 
the  unbelieving  pedants  of  the  schools  and  the  priests. 

The  fashion  in  which  Galileo's  sidereal  discoveries 
were  met  is  indeed  typical  of  the  whole  history  of  free- 
thought  :  the  clergy  pointed  to  the  story  of  Joshua 
stopping  the  sun  and  moon  ;  some  schoolmen  insisted 
that  "the  heavens  are  unchangeable,"  and  that  there 
was  no  authority  in  Aristotle  for  the  new  assertions  ; 
with  such  minds  the  man  of  science  had  to  argue,  and 
in  deference  to  such  he  had  at  length  to  affect  to  doubt 
his  own  demonstrations.^  The  Catholic  Reaction  had 
finally  created  as  bitter  a  spirit  of  hostility  to  free  science 
in  the  church  as  existed  among  the  Protestants  ;  and  in 
Italy  even  those  who  saw  the  moons  of  Jupiter  through 
his  telescope  dared  not  avow  what  they  had  seen.^  It 
was  therefore  an  unfortunate  step  on  his  part  to  go  from 
Padua,  which  was  under  the  rule  of  Venice,  then  anti- 
papal,^  to  Tuscany,  on  the  invitation  of  the  Grand  Duke. 

'  Karl  von  Gebler,  Galileo  Galilei  and  the  Roman  Curia,  Engf.  trans. 
1S79,  pp.  36-37. 

-  This  appears  from  the  letters  of  Sagredo  to  Galileo.  Gebler,  p  37. 
Cp.  Bayle,  art.  Cremonin,  notes  C  and  D  ;  and  Renan,  Averroes,  30 
^dit.  pp.  408-413. 

3  Lange,  Geschichte  des  Mafcrialisntiis,  i,  1S3  (Eng.  trans,  i,  220); 
Gebler,  p.  25. 

■•  Gebler,  pp.  54,  129,  and  passim  ;  The  Private  Life  of  Galileo,  Boston, 
1870,  pp.  67-72. 

=  Galileo's  letter  to  Kepler,  cited  by  Gebler,  p.  26. 

'  The  Jesuits  had  been  expelled  from  Venice  in  1616,  in  retaliation  for 
a  papal  interdict. 


76  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

When  in  1613  he  published  his  treatise  on  the  solar 
spots,  definitely  upholding  Copernicus  against  Jesuits 
and  Aristotelians,  trouble  became  inevitable  ;  and  his 
letter  to  his  pupil,  Father  Castelli,  professor  of  mathe- 
matics at  Pisa,  discussing  the  Biblical  argument  with 
which  they  had  both  been  met,  at  once  evoked  a  general 
explosion.  An  outcry  of  ignorant  Dominican  monks' 
sufficed  to  set  at  work  the  machinery  of  the  Index,  the 
first  result  of  which  (1616)  was  to  put  on  the  list  of 
condemned  books  the  great  treatise  of  Copernicus, 
published  seventy-three  years  before.  Galileo  person- 
ally escaped  for  the  present  through  the  friendly  inter- 
vention of  the  Pope,  Paul  V,  on  the  appeal  of  his 
patron,  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany,  apparently  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  not  publicly  taught  the  Copernican 
theory.  It  would  seem  as  if  some  of  the  heads  of  the 
church  were  at  heart  Copernicans,''  but  were  obliged  to 
disown  a  doctrine  felt  by  so  many  others  to  be 
subversive  of  the  church's  authority. 

See  the  details  of  the  procedure  in  Domenico  Berti,  // 
Processo  OriginaJe  de  Galileo  Galilei,  ed.  1878,  cap.  iv,  and  in 
Gebler,  ch.  vi.  The  latter  writer  claims  to  show  that,  of  two 
records  of  the  "admonition"  to  Galileo,  one,  the  more 
stringent  in  its  terms,  was  false,  though  made  at  the  date  it 
bears,  to  permit  of  subsequent  proceedings  against  Galileo. 
But  the  whole  thesis  is  otiose.  It  is  admitted  (Gebler,  p.  89) 
that  Galileo  was  admonished  "not  to  defend  or  hold  the 
Copernican  doctrine."  Gebler  contends,  however,  that  this 
was  not  a  command  to  keep  "entire  silence,"  and  that  there- 
fore Galileo  is  not  justly  to  be  charged  with  having  disobeyed 
the  injunction  of  the  Inquisition  when,  in  his  Dialogues  on  the 
Two  Pri^icipal  Systems  of  the  World,  the  Ptolemaic  and  Coper- 
nican (1632),  he  dealt  dialectically  with  the  subject,  neither 
affirming  nor  denying,  but  treating  both  theories  as  hypotheses. 
But  the  real  issue  is  not  Galileo's  cautious  disobedience  (see 

'  The  measure  of  reverence  with  which  the  orthodox  handled  the 
matter  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  the  Dominican  Caccini,  who 
preached  against  Galileo  in  Florence,  took  as  one  of  his  texts  the 
V'Crse  in  Acts  i:  '^Viri  Galilaei,  quid  stntis  aspicientes  in  ccelum,"  making- 
a  pun  on  the  Scripture. 

-  See  Tlie  Private  Life  of  Galileo,  Boston,  1870,  pp.  86-7,  91,  99; 
Gebler,  p.  44  ;  Berti,  II  Processo  Originate  de  Galileo  Galilei,  1878,  p.  53. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  77 

Gebler's  own  admissions,  p.  149)  to  an  irrational  decree,  but 
the  crime  of  the  church  in  silencing  him.  It  is  not  likely  that 
the  "enemies"  of  Galileo,  as  Gebler  supposes  (pp.  90,  338), 
anticipated  his  later  dialectical  handling-  of  the  subject,  and  so 
falsified  the  decision  of  the  Inquisition  against  him  in  1616. 
Gebler  had  at  first  adopted  the  German  theory  that  the  absolute 
command  to  silence  was  forged  in  1632  ;  and,  finding  the 
document  certainly  belonged  to  1616,  framed  the  new  theory, 
quite  unnecessarily,  to  save  Galileo's  credit.  The  two  records 
are  quite  in  the  spirit  and  manner  of  Inquisitorial  diplomac}'. 
As  Berti  remarks,  "  the  Holy  Office  proceeded  with  much 
heedlessness  (Jegereszd)  and  much  confusion"  in  1616.  Its 
first  judgment,  in  either  form,  merely  emphasises  the  guilt  of 
the  second. 

Thus  officially  "  admonished  "  for  his  heresy,  but  not 
punished,  in  1616,  Galileo  kept  silence  for  some  years, 
till  in  1618  he  published  his  (erroneous)  theory  of  the 
tides,  which  he  sent  with  an  ironical  epistle  to  the 
friendly  Archduke  Leopold  of  Austria,  professing  to  be 
propounding  a  mere  dream,  disallowed  by  the  official 
veto  on  Copernicus.'  This,  however,  did  him  less  harm 
than  his  essay  //  Saggiatore  ("  The  Scales  "),  in  which  he 
confuted  the  Jesuit  Grassi  on  the  question  of  comets. 
Receiving  the  imprimatur  in  1623,  it  was  dedicated  to 
the  new  pope.  Urban  VIII,  who,  as  the  Cardinal  Maffeo 
Barberini,  had  been  Galileo's  friend.  The  latter  could 
now  hope  for  freedom  of  speech,  as  he  had  all  along  had 
a  number  of  friends  at  the  papal  court,  besides  many 
priests,  among  his  admirers  and  disciples.  But  the 
enmity  of  the  Jesuits  countervailed  all.  They  did  not 
succeed  in  procuring  a  censure  of  the  Saggiatore,  though 
that  subtly  vindicates  the  Copernican  system  while  pro- 
fessing to  hold  it  disproved  by  the  fiat  of  the  church;-  but 
when,  venturing  further,  he  after  another  lapse  of  years 
produced  his  Dialogues  on  the  Two  Systems,  for  which 
he  obtained  the  papal  imprimatur  in  1632,  they  caught 
him  in  their  net.  Having  constant  access  to  the  Pope, 
they  contrived   to  make    him    believe  that  Galileo  had 

'  Gebler  (p.   loi)  solemnly  comments  on  this  letter  as  a  lapse  into 
"servility"  on  Copernicus'  part. 
-  Gebler,  pp.  112-113. 


78  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


ridiculed  him  in  one  of  the  personages  of  his  Dialogues. 
It  was  quite  false ;  but  one  of  the  Pope's  anti-Copernican 
arguments  was  there  unconsciously  made  light  of;  and 
his  wounded  vanity  was  probably  a  main  factor  in  the 
impeachment  which  followed.'  His  Holiness  professed 
to  have  been  deceived  into  granting  the  imprimatur ;^  a 
Special  Commission  was  set  on  foot;  the  proceedings 
of  1616  were  raked  up  ;  and  Galileo  was  again  sum- 
moned to  Rome.  He  was  old  and  frail,  and  sent 
medical  certificates  of  his  unfitness  for  such  travel ;  but 
it  was  insisted  on,  and  as  under  the  papal  tyranny 
there  was  no  help,  he  accordingly  made  the  journey. 
After  many  delays  he  was  tried,  and,  on  his  formal 
abjuration,  sentenced  to  formal  imprisonment  (1633)  for 
teaching  the  "absurd"  and  "false  doctrine"  of  the 
motion  of  the  earth  and  the  non-motion  of  the  sun  from 
east  to  west.  In  this  case  the  Pope,  whatever  were  his 
motives,  acted  as  a  hot  anti-Copernican,  expressing  his 
personal  opinion  on  the  question  again  and  again,  and 
always  in  an  anti-Copernican  sense.  In  both  cases, 
however,  the  Popes,  while  agreeing  to  the  verdict, 
abstained  from  officially  ratifying  it,3  so  that,  in  proceed- 
ing to  force  Galileo  to  abjure  his  doctrine,  the  Inquisi- 
tion technically  exceeded  its  powers — a  circumstance  in 
which  some  Catholics  appear  to  find  comfort.  Seeing 
that  three  of  the  ten  cardinals  named  in  the  preamble  to 
the  sentence  did  not  sign,  it  has  been  inferred  that  they 
dissented  ;  but  there  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose  that 
either  the  Pope  or  they  wilfully  abstained  from  signing. 
They  had  gained  their  point — the  humiliation  of  the 
oi'reat  discoverer. 

Compare  Gebler,  p.  241  ;  Private  Life,  p.  257,  quoting- 
Tiraboschi.  For  an  exposure  of  the  many  perversions  of  the 
facts  as  to  Galileo  by  Catholic  writers  see  Parchappe,  Galilee, 
sa  vie,  etc.,  2e  Partie.  To  such  straits  has  the  Catholic 
Church  been  reduced  in  this  matter  that  part  of  its  defence  of 
the  treatment  of  Galileo  is  the   plea   that   he    unwarrantably 

'  Private  Life,  pp.  216-218;  Gebler,  pp.  157-162. 

'  Berti,  pp.  61-64;  Private  Life,  pp.  212-213;  Gebler,  p.  162. 

3  Gebler,  p.  239 ;  Private  Life,  p.  256. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  79 

asserted  tliat  the  fixity  of  the  sun  and  the  motion  of  the  earth 
were  taught  in  the  Scriptures.  (See  Galileo  e  /'  Inquisizione,  by 
INlonsig-nor  Marini,  Roma,  1850,  pp.  i,  53-4,  etc.)  Had  he 
really  done  so  he  would  only  have  been  assenting  to  what  his 
priestlv  opponents  constantly  dinned  in  his  ears.  But  in  point 
of  fact  he  had  not  so  assented  ;  for  in  his  letter  to  Castelli  (see 
Gebler,  pp.  46-50)  he  had  earnestly  deprecated  the  argument 
from  the  Bible,  urging  that  though  Scripture  could  not  err  its 
interpreters  might  misunderstand  it  ;  and  even  going  so  far 
as  to  argue,  with  much  ingenuity,  that  the  story  of  Joshua, 
literally  interpreted,  could  be  made  to  harmonise  with  the 
Copernican  theory,  but  not  at  all  with  the  Ptolemaic. 

The  thesis  of  Monsignor  Marini  deserves  to  rank  as  the 
highest  flight  of  absurdity  and  effrontery  in  the  entire  discussion. 
Every  step  in  both  procedures  of  the  Inquisition  insists  on  the 
falsity  and  the  anti-scriptural  character  of  the  doctrine  that  the 
earth  moves  round  the  sun  (see  Berti,  //  Processo,  p.  115  sq.  ; 
Gebler,  pp.  76-7,  230-4)  ;  and  never  once  is  it  hinted  that 
Galileo's  error  lay  in  ascribing  to  the  Bible  the  doctrine  of  the 
earth's  fixity. 

The  stories  of  his  being  tortured  and  bhnded,  and 
saying  "Still  it  moves,"  are  indeed  myths.'  The  broken- 
spirited  old  man  was  in  no  mood  so  to  speak  ;  he  was, 
moreover,  in  all  respects  save  his  science,  an  orthodox 
Catholic,^  and  as  such  not  likely  to  defy  the  Church  to 
its  face.  In  reality  he  was  formally  in  the  custody  of 
the  Inquisition — and  this  not  in  a  cell,  but  in  the  house 
of  an  official — for  only  twenty-two  days.  After  the 
sentence  he  was  again  formally  detained  for  some  seven- 
teen davs  in  the  Villa  Medici,  but  was  then  allowed  to 
return  to  his  own  rural  home  at  Acatri,^  on  condition 
that  he  lived  in  solitude,  receiving  no  visitors.  He  was 
thus  much  more  truly  a  prisoner  than  the  so-called 
*'  prisoner  of  the  Vatican  "  in  our  own  day.  The  worst 
part  of  the  sentence,  however,  was  the  placing  of  all  his 

'  Gebler,  pp.  249-263  ;  Private  Life,  pp.  255-6 ;  Marini,  pp.  55-57. 
The  "  e  pur  si  muove  "  story  is  first  heard  of  in  1774.  As  to  the  torture, 
it  is  to  be  remembered  thai  Galileo  recanted  under  threat  of  it.  See 
Berti,  pp.  93-101  ;  Marini,  p.  59;  Professor  Lodg^e,  Pioneers  of  Science, 
1893,  pp.  128-131.  Berti  argues  that  only  the  special  humanity  of  the 
Commissary-General,  Macolano,  saved  him  from  the  torture.  Cp. 
Gebler,  p.  259,  note. 

^  Gebler,  p.  281. 

3  Private  Life,  pp.  255-260,  268  ;  Gebler,  p.  252. 


8o  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 


works,  published  and  unpublished,  on  the  Index  Expur- 
gatoriiis,  and  the  gag  thus  laid  on  all  utterance  of 
rational  scientific  thought  in  Italy — an  evil  of  incalculable 
influence.  "  The  lack  of  liberty  and  speculation,"  writes 
a  careful  Italian  student,  "was  the  cause  of  the  death 
first  of  the  Accademia  dei  Lincei,  an  institution  unique 
in  its  time  ;  then  of  the  Accademia  del  Cimento.  Thus 
Italy,  after  the  marvellous  period  of  vigorous  native 
civilisation  in  the  thirteenth  century,  after  a  second 
period  of  civilisation  less  native  but  still  its  own,  as 
being  Latin,  saw  itself  arrested  on  the  threshold  of  a 
third  and  not  less  splendid  period.  Vexations  and  pro- 
hibitions expelled  courage,  spontaneity,  and  universality 
from  the  national  mind  ;  literary  style  became  uncertain, 
indeterminate  ;  and,  forbidden  to  treat  of  government, 
science,  or  religion,  turned  to  things  frivolous  and 
fruitless.  For  the  great  academies,  instituted  to  renovate 
and  further  the  study  of  natural  philosophy,  were 
substituted  small  ones  without  any  such  aim.  Intellectual 
energy,  the  love  of  research  and  of  objective  truth,  great- 
ness of  feeling  and  nobility  of  character,  all  suffered. 
Nothing  so  injures  a  people  as  the  compulsion  to  express 
or  conceal  its  thought  solely  from  motives  of  fear.  The 
nation  in  which  those  conditions  were  set  up  became 
intellectually  inferior  to  those  in  which  it  was  possible 
to  pass  freely  in  the  vast  regions  of  knowledge.  Her 
culture  grew  restricted,  devoid  of  originality,  vaporous, 
umbratile  ;  there  arose  habits  of  servility  and  dissimula- 
tion ;  great  books,  great  men,  great  purposes  were 
denaturalised."' 

It  was  thus  in  the  other  countries  of  Europe  that 
Galileo's  teaching  bore  its  fruit,  for  he  speedily  got  his 
condemned  Dialogues  published  in  Latin  by  the 
Elzevirs  ;  and  in  1638,  also  at  the  hands  of  the  Elzevirs, 
appeared  his  Dialogues  of  the  New  Sciences  [i.e.,  of 
mechanics  and  motion],  the  "  foundation  of  mechanical 
physics."     By  this  time  he  was  totally  blind,  and   then 

'  Berti,  II  Processo  di  Galileo,  ed.  1878,  pp.  ni-112. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  8i 

only,  when  physicians  could  not  help  him  save  by 
prolonging  his  life,  was  he  allowed  to  live  under  strict 
surveillance  in  Florence,  needing  a  special  indulgence 
from  the  Inquisition  to  permit  him  even  to  go  to  church 
at  Easter.  The  desire  of  his  last  blind  days,  to  have 
with  him  his  best-beloved  pupil.  Father  Castelli,  was 
granted  only  under  rigid  limitation  and  supervision, 
though  even  the  Papacy  could  not  keep  from  him  the 
plaudits  of  the  thinkers  of  Europe.  Finally  he  passed 
away  in  his  rural  "prison  " — after  five  years  of  blindness 
— in  1642,  the  year  of  Newton's  birth.  Not  till  1757 
did  the  Papacy  permit  other  books  teaching  his  system  ; 
not  until  1820  was  permission  given  to  treat  it  as  true  ; 
and  not  until  1835  was  it  withdrawn  from  the  Index 
Expurgatoyius. ' 

While  modern  science  was  thus  being  placed  on  its 
special  basis,  a  continuous  resistance  was  being  made  in 
the  schools  to  the  dogmatism  which  held  the  mutilated 
lore  of  Aristotle  as  the  sum  of  human  wisdom.  Like 
the  ecclesiastical  revolution,  this  had  been  protracted 
through  centuries.  Aristotelianism,  whether  theistic 
or  pantheistic,  whether  orthodox  or  heterodox,'  had 
become  a  dogmatism  like  another,  a  code  that  vetoed 
revision,  a  fetter  laid  on  the  mind.  Even  as  a  negation 
of  Christian  superstition  it  had  become  impotent,  for  the 
Peripatetics  were  not  only  ready  to  make  common  cause 
with  the  Jesuits  against  Galileo,  as  we  have  seen  ;  some 
of  them  were  content  even  to  join  in  the  appeal  to  the 
Bible. 3  The  result  of  such  uncritical  partisanship  was 
that  the  immense  service  of  Aristotle  to  mental  life — 


'  Gebler,  pp.  312-315. 

^  See  Uebervveg,  ii,  12,  as  to  the  conflicting  types.  In  addition  to 
Cremonini,  several  leading-  Aristotelians  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  were  accused  of  atheism  (Hallam,  Lit.  Hist,  ii,  101-2),  the  old 
charge  against  the  Peripatetic  school.  Hallam  (p.  102)  complains 
that  Cesalpini  of  Pisa  "substitutes  the  barren  unity  of  pantheism  for 
religion."  Cp.  Ueberweg,  ii,  14;  Renan,  Averroes,  3e  edit.  p.  417.  An 
Averroist  on  some  points,  he  believed  in  separate  immortality. 

3  Gebler,  pp.  37,  45.  Gebler  appears  to  surmise  that  Cremonini  may 
have  escaped  the  attack  upon  himself  by  turning  suspicion  upon  Galileo, 
but  as  to  this  there  is  no  evidence. 

VOL.   II  G 


82  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOUGHT 

the  comprehensive  grasp  which  gave  him  his  long 
supremacy  as  against  rival  system-makers,  and  makes 
him  still  so  much  more  important  than  any  of  the 
thinkers  who  in  the  sixteenth  century  revolted  against 
him — was  by  opponents  disregarded  and  denied,  though 
the  range  and  depth  of  his  influence  is  apparent  in  all 
the  polemic  against  him,  notably  in  that  of  Bacon, 
who  is  constantly  citing  him,  and  relates  his  reasoning 
to  him,  however  antagonistically,  at  every  turn. 

Naturally,  the  less  sacrosanct  dogmatism  was  the 
more  freely  assailed  ;  and  in  the  sixteenth  century  the 
attacks  became  numerous  and  vehement.  Luther  was  a 
furious  anti-Aristotelian,'  as  were  also  some  Calvinists  ; 
but  in  1570  we  find  Beza  declaring  to  Ramus^  that  "the 
Genevese  have  decreed,  once  and  for  ever,  that  they  will 
never,  neither  in  logic  nor  in  any  other  branch  of 
learning,  turn  away  from  the  teaching  of  Aristotle."  In 
Italv,  Telesio,  who  notably  anticipates  the  tone  of 
Bacon  as  to  natural  science,  and  is  largely  followed  by 
him,  influenced  Bruno  in  the  anti-Aristotelian  direction, ^ 
though  it  was  in  a  long  line  from  Aristotle  that  he  got 
his  principle  of  the  eternity  of  the  universe.  The 
Spaniard  Ludovicus  Vives,  too  (1492-1540),  pronounced 
by  Lange  one  of  the  clearest  heads  of  his  age,  had 
insisted  on  progress  beyond  Aristotle  in  the  spirit  of 
naturalist  science.^  But  the  typical  anti-Aristotelian  of 
the  century  was  Ramus  (Pierre  de  la  Ramee,  1515-72), 
whose  long  and  strenuous  battle  against  the  ruling 
school  at  Paris  brought  him  to  his  death  in  the  Massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew, 5  and  who  hardily  laid  it  down  that 
"  there  is  no  authority  over  reason,  but  reason  ought  to 

^  Ueberwegf,  ii,  17.  ^  Epist.  36. 

3  Bartholm^ss,  Jordano  Bruno,  i,  49. 

•♦  Lange,  Gesch.  des  Materialismus,  i,  189-190  (Eng-.  trans,  i,  228). 
Born  in  V^alencia  and  trained  at  Paris,  \'ives  became  a  humanist  teacher 
at  Louvain,  and  was  called  to  England  (1523)  to  be  tutor  to  the  Princess 
Mary,  and  taught  at  Oxford.  Being-  opposed  to  the  divorce  of  Henry  VIII, 
he  was  imprisoned  for  a  time,  afterwards  living  at  Bruges. 

5  See  the  copious  monograph.  Ramus,  sa  vie,  ses  Serifs,  ef  ses  opinions, 
par  Ch.  Waddington,  1855.  Mr.  Owen  has  a  good  account  of  Ramus 
in  his  French  Skeptics  of  the  Renaissance. 


SCIENTIFIC  THOUGHT  83 


be  queen  and  ruler  over  authority."'  Such  a  message 
was  of  more  value  than  his  imperfect  attempt  to 
supersede  the  Aristotelian  logic.  Bacon,  who  carried 
on  in  England  the  warfare  against  the  Aristotelian  tradi- 
tion, never  ventured  so  to  express  himself  as  against  the 
theological  tyranny,  though,  as  we  have  seen,  the  general 
energy  and  vividness  of  his  argumentation  gave  him  an 
influence  which  undermined  the  orthodoxies  to  which  he 
professed  to  conform.  On  the  other  hand,  he  did  no 
such  service  to  exact  science  as  was  rendered  in  his  day 
by  Kepler  and  Galileo  and  their  English  emulators  ; 
and  his  full  didactic  influence  came  much  later  into  play. 
Like  fallacies  to  Bacon's  maybe  found  in  Descartes; 
but  he  in  turn,  next  to  Copernicus,  Kepler,  and  Galileo,^ 
unquestionably  laid  a  good  part  of  the  foundation  of 
modern  philosophy  and  science, ^  Gassendi  largely 
aiding.  Though  he  never  does  justice  to  Galileo,  from 
his  fear  of  provoking  the  church,  it  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  he  owes  to  him  in  large  part  the  early 
determination  of  his  mind  to  scientific  methods;  for  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  the  account  he  gives  of  his 
mental  development  in  the  Discoiws  de  la  Methode 
(1637)  is  biographically  true.  It  is  rather  the  schemed 
statement,  by  a  ripened  mind,  of  how  it  might  best 
have  been  developed.  Nor  did  Descartes,  any  more 
than  Bacon,  live  up  to  the  intellectual  idea  he  had 
framed.  All  through  his  life  he  anxiously  sought  to 
propitiate  the  church  ;+  Gassendi  was  a  priest  ;  and 
both  were   unmenaced   in  France  under  Richelieu  and 

'  Scholce  math.  1.  iii,  p.  78,  cited  by  Wadding-ton,  p.  343. 

-  ••  In  many  respects  Galileo  deserves  to  be  ranked  with  Descartes  as 
inaugurating-  modern  philosophy."  Professor  Adamson,  The  Develop- 
ment of  Modern  Philosop/iv,  1903,  i,  5.  "  We  may  compare  his  [Hobbes's] 
thought  with  Descartes's,  but  the  impulse  came  to  him  from  the 
physical  reasonings  of  Galileo."  Professor  Croom  Robertson,  Hobbes, 
1886,  p.  42. 

3  Buckle,  i-vol.  ed.  pp.  3-27-336;  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  77-85.  Cp.  Lang-e  (Eng-. 
trans,  i,  248,  note) ;  Adamson,  The  Philosophy  of  Kant,  1879,  p.   194. 

•*  Cp.  Lang-e,  i,  425  (Eng.  trans,  i,  248-9,  note);  Bouillier,  Hist,  de  la 
philos.  cartdsienne,  1854,  i,  40-47,  185-6  ;  Bartholmiss,  Jordano  Bruno, 
i,  354-5  ;  Memoir  in  Garnier  ed.  of  CEuvres  Choisies,  p.  v,  also  pp.  6,  17, 
19,  21.  Bossuet  pronounced  his  precautions  excessive.  But  cp.  Dr. 
Land's  notes  in  Spinosa  :  Four  Essays,  1882,  p.  55. 


84  THE  RISE  OF  MODERN  FREETHOVGHT 

Mazarin  ;  but  the  unusual  rationalism  of  Descartes's 
method,  avowedly  aiming  at  the  uprooting  of  all  his 
own  prejudices'  as  a  first  step  to  truth,  displeased  the 
Jesuits,  and  could  not  escape  the  hostile  attention  of  the 
Protestant  theologians  of  Holland,  where  Descartes 
passed  so  many  years  of  his  life.  Despite  his  constant 
theism,  accordingly,  he  had  at  length  to  withdraw.^  A 
Jesuit,  Pere  Bourdin,  sought  to  have  the  Discours  de  la 
Methode  condemned  by  the  French  clergy,  but  the 
attempt  failed.  France  was  for  the  time,  in  fact,  the 
most  freethinking  part  of  Europe  ;3  and  Descartes, 
though  not  so  unsparing  with  his  prejudices  as  he  set 
out  to  be,  was  the  greatest  innovator  in  philosophy  that 
had  arisen  in  the  Christian  era.  He  made  real  scientific 
discoveries  where  Bacon  only  inspired  an  approach  and 
schemed  a  wandering  road  to  them  ;  and,  though 
his  timorous  conformities  deprive  him  of  any  heroic 
status,  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  pronounce  him 
"the  great  reformer  and  liberator  of  the  European 
intellect."'*  One  not  given  to  warm  sympathy  with  free- 
thought  has  avowed  that  "  the  common  root  of  modern 
philosophy  is  the  doubt  which  is  alike  Baconian  and 
Cartesian. "5  From  Descartes,  then,  as  regards  philo- 
sophy, more  than  from  any  professed  thinker  of  his  day, 
but  also  from  the  other  thinkers  we  have  noted,  from  the 
reactions  of  scientific  discovery,  from  the  terrible  experi- 
ence of  the  potency  of  religion  as  a  breeder  of  strife  and 
its  impotence  as  a  curber  of  evil,  and  from  the  practical 
freethinking  of  the  more  open-minded  of  that  age  in 
general,  derives  the  great  rationalistic  movement  which, 
taking  clear  literary  form  first  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  has  with  some  fluctuations  broadened  and 
deepened  down  to  our  own  day. 


'  Discours  de  la  Mdthode,  pties.  i,  ii,  iii,  iv  {CEuvres  Choisies,  pp.  8,  lo, 
II,  22,  24);  ISIeditation  I  (id.  pp.  73-74). 

^  Full  details  in  Kuno  Fischer's  Descartes  and  his  School,  Eng.  trans. 
1890,  B.  i,  ch.  6  ;  Bouillier,  i,  cc.  xii,  xiii. 

3  Buckle,  i-vol.  ed.  pp.  337-9  ;  3-vol.  ed.  ii,  94,  97. 

■*  Buckle,  p.  330  ;  ii,  82. 

5  Kuno  Fischer,  Francis  Bacon,  Eng.  trans.  1857,  p,  74. 


Chapter  XIV. 

BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  SEVEN- 
TEENTH CENTURY 

The  propagandist  literature  of  deism  begins  with  an 
English  diplomatist,  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  the 
friend  of  Bacon,  who  stood  in  the  full  stream  of  the 
current  freethought  of  England  and  France'  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.  English  deism,  as 
literature,  is  thus  at  its  very  outset  affiliated  with  French; 
all  of  its  elements,  critical  and  ethical,  are  germinal  in 
Bodin,  Montaigne,  and  Charron,  each  and  all  of  whom 
had  a  direct  influence  on  English  thought ;  and  we 
shall  find  later  French  thought,  as  in  the  cases  of 
Gassendi,  Bayle,  Simon,  St.  Evremond,  and  Voltaire, 
alternately  influenced  by  and  reacting  on  English.  But, 
apart  from  the  undeveloped  rationalism  of  the  Elizabethan 
period,  which  never  found  literary  expression,  the  French 
ferment  seems  to  have  given  the  first  effective  impulse. 

We  have  seen  the  state  of  upper-class  and  middle-class 
opinion  in  France  about  1624.  It  was  in  Paris  in  that 
year  that  Herbert  published  his  De  Veritate^  after  acting 
for  many  years  as  the  English  ambassador  at  the  French 
court.  Hitherto  deism  had  been  represented  by  unpub- 
lished arguments  disingenuously  dealt  with  in  published 
answers  ;  henceforth  there  slowly  grows  up  a  deistic 
literature.  Herbert  was  a  powerful  and  audacious  noble- 
man, with  a  weak  king ;  and  he  could  venture  on  a 
publication  which  would  have  cost  an  ordinary  man 
dear.     Yet  even  he  saw  fit  to  publish  in  Latin  ;  and  he 

'  Jenkiii  Thomasius  in  his  Historia  Atheismi  (1709)  joins  Herbert  with 
Bodin  as  having-  five  points  in  common  with  him  (ch.  ix,  §  2,  pp.  76-77). 

S5 


86  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i^th  CENTURY 

avowed  hesitations.'  His  work  has  two  aspects,  a 
philosophical  and  a  political,  and  in  both  it  is  remark- 
able.- Rejecting  tacitly  the  theological  basis  of  current 
philosophy,  he  divides  the  human  mind  into  four 
faculties— Natural  Instinct,  Internal  Sense,  External 
Sense,  and  the  Discursive  faculty — through  one  or  other 
of  which  all  our  knowledge  emerges.  Of  course,  he 
makes  the  first  the  verification  of  his  idea  of  God, 
pronouncing  that  to  be  primary,  independent,  and 
universally  entertained,  and  therefore  not  lawfully  to  be 
disputed  (already  a  contradiction  in  terms)  ;  but,  inas- 
much as  scriptural  revelation  has  no  place  in  the 
process,  the  position  is  conspicuously  more  advanced 
than  that  of  Bacon  in  the  De  Augmentis,  published  the 
year  before,  and  even  than  that  of  Locke,  sixty  years 
later.  On  the  question  of  concrete  religion  Herbert  is 
still  more  aggressive.  His  argument^  is,  in  brief,  that 
no  professed  revelation  can  have  a  decisive  claim  to 
rational  acceptance  ;  that  none  escapes  sectarian  dispute 
in  its  own  field  ;  that  as  each  one  misses  most  of  the 
human  race  none  seems  to  be  divine  ;  and  that  human 
reason  can  do  for  morals  all  that  any  one  of  them  does. 
The  negative  generalities  of  Montaigne  here  pass  into 
a  positive  anti-Christian  argument ;  for  Herbert  goes  on 
to  pronounce  the  doctrine  of  forgiveness  for  faith 
immoral.  Like  all  pioneers,  Herbert  falls  into  some 
inconsistencies  on  his  own  part ;  the  most  flagrant  being 
his  claim  to  have  had  a  sign  from  heaven — that  is,  a 
private  and  special  revelation — encouraging  him  to 
publish  his  book.*  But  his  criticism  is  none  the  less 
telling  and  persuasive  so  far  as  it  goes,  and   remains 


'  The  book  was  reprinted  at  Paris  in  Latin  in  1633,  and  agfain  at 
London  in  1645.  It  was  translated  and  published  in  French  in  1639,  but 
never  in  Eng-lish. 

-  Compare  the  verdict  of  Hamilton  in  his  ed.  oi  Reid,  Note  A,  §  6, 
35  (P-  781)- 

3  For  a  g-ood  analysis  see  Punjer,  Hist,  of  the  Christ.  Philos.  of  Reli- 
gion, Eng.  trans.  1887,  pp.  292-9  ;  also  Noack,  Die  Frcidenker  in  der  Reli- 
gion, Bern,  1853,  i,  17-40;  and  Lechler,  Gescliichte  des  englischen  Deisnius, 

PP-  36-54- 

■*  See  his  Autobiography,  Murray's  reprint,  p.  93. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY         87 

valid  to  this  day.  Nor  do  his  later  and  posthumous 
works'  add  to  it  in  essentials,  though  they  do  much  to 
construct  the  deistic  case  on  historical  lines.  The  De 
religione  gentiUum  in  particular  is  a  noteworthy  study  of 
pre-Christian  religions,  apparently  motived  by  doubt  or 
challenp"e  as  to  his  theorem  of  the  universality  of  the 
God-idea.  It  proves  only  racial  universality  without 
agreement ;  but  it  is  so  far  a  scholarly  beginning  of 
rational  hierology. 

The  next  great  freethinking  figure  in  England  is 
Thomas  Hobbes  (i 588-1679),  the  most  important 
thinker  of  his  age,  after  Descartes,  and  hardly  less 
influential.  But  the  purpose  of  Hobbes  being  always 
substantially  political  and  regulative,  his  unfaith  in  the 
current  religion  is  only  incidentally  revealed  in  the 
writings  in  which  he  seeks  to  show  the  need  for  keeping 
it  under  monarchic  control.^  Hobbes  is  in  fact  the  anti- 
Presbyterian  or  anti-Puritan  philosopher ;  and  to 
discredit  anarchic  religion  in  the  eyes  of  the  majority 
he  is  obliged  to  speak  as  a  judicial  churchman.  Yet 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  he  was  no  orthodox 
Christian  ;  and  even  his  professed  theism  resolves  itself 
somewhat  easily  into  virtual  agnosticism  on  logical 
pressure.  No  thought  of  prudence  could  withhold  him 
from  showing,  in  a  discussion  on  words,  that  he  held  the 
doctrine  of  the  Logos  to  be  meaningless. ^  Of  atheism 
he  was  repeatedly  accused^  by  both  royalists  and  rebels  ; 
and  his  answer  was  forensic  rather  than  fervent,  alike  as 
to  his  scripturalism,  his  Christianity,  and  his  impersonal 
conception  of  Deity. ^     In  affirming  "  one  God  eternal" 

'  De  caiisis  crrorum.  una  cum  tractate  de  religio7ie  laid  et  appendice  ad 
sacerdotcs  (16^^)  ;  De  religione  geiitiliiiin  (iGGt,).  The  latter  was  trans- 
lated into  English  in  1705.  The  former  are  short  appendices  to  the  De 
Veritate. 

-  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
civil  power  in  religious  matters  (Erastianism)  was  maintained  by  some 
of  the  ablest  men  on  the  Parliamentary  side,  in  particular  Selden. 

3  Leviathan,  ch.  iv.      Morley's  ed.  p.  26. 

•*  Reviving  as  he  did  the  ancient  rationalistic  doctrine  of  the  eternity 
of  the  world  {De  Corpore,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  viii,  §  20),  he  gave  a  clear  footing 
for  atheism  as  against  the  Jud^eo-Christian  view. 

5  Cp.  his  letter  to   an  opponent,  Considerations  upon  the  Reputation, 


88  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  ijth  CENTURY 


of  whom  men  "cannot  have  any  idea  in  their  mind, 
answerable  to  his  nature,"  he  was  negating  all  creeds. 
He  expressly  contends,  it  is  true,  for  the  principle  of  a 
Providence  ;  but  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  he  laid  any 
store  by  prayer,  public  or  private  ;  and  it  would  appear 
that  whatever  thoughtful  atheism  there  was  in  England 
in  tlie  latter  part  of  the  century  looked  to  him  as  its 
philosopher,  in  so  far  as  it  did  not  derive  from  Spinoza.' 
Nor  could  the  Naturalist  school  of  that  day  desire  a 
better,  terser,  or  more  -drastic  scientific  definition  of 
religion  than  Hobbes  gave  them  :  "  Fear  of  power 
invisible,  feigned  by  the  mind  or  imagined  from  tales 
publicly  allowed,  Religion;  not  alloived.  Supersti- 
tion."^ As  the  churchmen  readily  saw,  his  insistence 
on  identifying  the  religion  of  a  country  with  its  law 
plainly  implied  that  no  religion  is  any  more  "  revealed  " 
than  another.  With  him  too  begins  (1651)  the  public 
criticism  of  the  Bible  on  literary  or  documentary 
grounds  ;3  though,  as  we  have  seen,  this  had  already 
gone  far  in  private  ;+  and  he  gave  a  new  lead,  partly  as 
against  Descartes,  to  a  materialistic  philosophy. 5  He 
was,  in  fact,  in  a  special  and  peculiar  degree  for  his 
age,  a  freethinker ;  and  so  deep  was  his  intellectual 
hostility  to  the  clergy  of  all  species  that  he  could  not 
forego  enraging  those  of  his  own  political  side  by  his 
sarcasms.^  Here  he  is  in  marked  contrast  with 
Descartes,  who  dissembled  his  opinion  about  Coper- 
nicus and  Galileo  for  peace' sake  ;7  and  was  always  the 

etc.,  of  Thomas  Hobbes,  1680,  with  cc.  xi  and  xii  of  Leviathati,  and  De 
Cor  pore  Politico,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  6.  One  of  his  most  explicit  declarations  for 
theism  is  in  the  De  Hoiiiiiie,  ch.  i,  where  he  employs  the  design  argu- 
ment, declaring  that  he  who  will  not  see  that  the  bodily  organs  are  a 
mente  aliqua  conditas  ordinatasque  ad  sua  qiiasqzie  officia  miist'be  himself 
without  mind.  This  ascription  of  "mind,"  however,  he  tacitly  negates 
in  Leviathan,  ch.  xi,  and  De  Corpore Politico,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  6. 

'  Cp.  Bentley's  letter  to  Bernard,  1692,  cited  in  the  author's  Dynamics 
of  Religion,  pp.  82-3. 

-  Leviathan,  Pt.  i,  ch.  6.      Morley's  ed.  p.  34. 

^Leviathan,  Pt.  iii,  ch.  t,2>- 

•♦  Above,  p.  41. 

5  On  this  see  Lange,  Hist,  of  Materialism,  sec.  iii,  ch.  ii. 

•^  E.g.,  Leviathan,  Pt.  iv,  ch.  47. 

^  Kuno  Fischer,  Descartes  a)id  Iiis  School,  pp.  232-1;. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  ijth  CENTURY  89 

close  friend  of  the  orthodox  champion   Mersenne  down 
to  his  death.' 

With  the  partial  exception  of  the  more  refined  and 
graceful  Pecock,  Hobbes  has  of  all  English  thinkers 
down  to  his  period  the  clearest  and  hardest  head  for  all 
purposes  of  reasoning,  save  in  the  single  field  of 
mathematics,  where  he  meddled  without  mastery  ;  and 
against  the  theologians  of  his  time  his  argumentation  is 
as  a  two-edged  sword.  That  such  a  man  should  have 
been  resolutely  on  the  side  of  the  king  in  the  Civil  War 
is  one  of  the  proofs  of  the  essential  fanaticism  and  arbi- 
trariness of  the  orthodox  Puritans,  who  plotted  more 
harm  to  the  heresies  they  disliked  than  was  ever  wreaked 
on  themselves.  Hobbes  came  near  enough  being 
clerically  ostracised  among  the  Royalists  ;  but  among 
the  earlier  Puritans,  or  under  an  Independent  Puritan 
Parliament  at  any  time,  he  would  have  stood  a  fair 
chance  of  execution.  It  was  doubtless  largely  due  to 
the  anti-persecuting  influence  of  Cromwell,  as  well  as  to 
his  having  ostensibly  deserted  the  royalists,  that  Hobbes 
was  allowed  to  settle  quietly  in  England  after  making 
his  submission  to  the  Rump  Parliament  in  165 1.  In 
1666  his  Leviathan  and  De  Cive  were  together  con- 
demned by  the  Restoration  Parliament  in  its  grotesque 
panic  of  piety  after  the  Great  Fire  of  London  ;  but 
Charles  II  protected  and  pensioned  him,  though  he  was 
forbidden  to  publish  anything  further  on  burning  ques- 
tions, and  Leviathan  was  not  permitted  in  his  lifetime  to 
be  republished  in  English.-  He  was  thus  for  his  genera- 
tion the  typical  "infidel,"  the  royalist  clergy  being 
perhaps  his  bitterest  enemies.  His  spontaneous 
hostility  to  fanaticism  shaped  his  literary  career,  which 


'  Hobbes  also  was  of  Mersenne's  acquaintance,  but  only  as  a  man  of 
science.  When,  in  1647,  Hobbes  was  believed  to  be  dying,  Mersenne 
for  the  first  time  sought  to  discuss  theology  with  him  ;  but  the  sick  man 
instantly  changed  the  subject.  In  1648  Mersenne  died.  He  thus  did 
not  live  to  meet  the  strain  of  Hobbes's  Leviathan  (1651),  which  enraged 
the  French  no  less  than  the  English  clergy.  See  Professor  Croom 
Robertson's  Hobbes,  pp.  63-65. 

^  Croom  Robertson,  Hobbes,  p.  196  ;  Pepys's  Diary,  Sept.  3rd,  166S. 


90  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyth  CENTURY 

began  in  1628  with  a  translation  of  Thucydides,  under- 
taken by  way  of  showing  the  dangers  of  democracy. 
Next  came  the  De  Cive  (Paris,  1642),  written  when  he 
was  already  an  elderly  man  ;  and  thenceforth  the  Civil 
War  tinges  his  whole  temper. 

It  is  in  fact  by  way  of  a  revolt  against  all  theological 
ethic,  as  demonstrably  a  source  of  civil  anarchy,  that 
Hobbes  formulates  a  strictly  civic  or  legalist  ethic,  deny- 
ing the  supremacy  of  an  abstract  or  a  priori  natural 
moral  law  (though  he  founded  on  natural  law),  as  well  as 
rejecting  all  supernatural  illumination  of  the  conscience.' 
In  the  Church  of  Rome  itself  there  had  inevitably  arisen 
the  practice  of  Casuistry,  in  which  to  a  certain  extent 
ethics  had  to  be  rationally  studied  ;  and  early  Protestant 
Casuistry,  repudiating  the  authority  of  the  priest,  had  to 
rely  still  more  on  reason. 

Compare  Whewell,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Moral  Philo- 
sophy, ed.  1862,  pp.  25-38,  where  it  is  affirmed  that,  after  the 
Reformation,  "Since  the  assertions  of  the  teacher  had  no 
inherent  autliority,  he  was  obliged  to  give  his  proofs  as  well  as 
his  results,"  and  "the  determination  of  cases  v;?^^  replaced  by 
the  discipline  of  conscience''''  {\>.  2<:)).  There  is  an  interesting" 
progression  in  English  Protestant  casuistry  from  VV.  Perkins 
(1558-1602)  and  W.  Ames  (pub.  1630),  through  Bishops  Hall 
and  Sanderson,  to  Jeremy  Taylor.  Mosheim  (17  Cent.  sec.  ii, 
Pt.  ii,  §  9)  pronounces  Ames  "the  first  among  the  Reformed 
who  attempted  to  elucidate  and  arrange  the  science  of  morals 
as  distinct  from  that  of  dogmatics."  See  biog.  notes  on  Perkins 
and  Ames  in  Whewell,  pp.  27-29,  and   Reid's  Mosheim,  p.  b8i. 

But  Hobbes  passed  in  two  strides  to  the  position  that 
natural  morality  is  a  set  of  demonstrable  inferences  as 
to  what  adjustments  promote  general  well-being;  and 
further  that  there  is  no  practical  code  of  right  and  wrong 
apart  from  positive  social  law.-  He  thus  practically 
introduced  once  for  all  into  modern  Christendom  the 
fundamental   dilemma   of   rationalistic    ethics,    not  only 


'  Leviathan,  ch.  ii  :   Morley's  ed.  p.  19;  cc.  xiv,  xv,  pp.  66,  71,  72,  78; 
ch.  xxix,  pp.  148,  149. 

^  Leviathan,  cc.  xv,  xvii,  xviii.      Morley's  ed.  pp.  72,  ^2,  83,  85. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY         91 

positing    the    problem    for    his    own    generation,'    but 
anticipating  it  as  handled  in  later  times. ~ 

How  far  his  rationalism  was  ahead  of  that  of  his  age 
may  be  realised  by  comparing  his  positions  with  those 
of  John  Selden,  the  most  learned  and,  outside  of 
philosophy,  one  of  the  shrewdest  of  the  men  of  that 
generation,  Selden  was  sometimes  spoken  of  by  the 
Hobbists  as  a  freethinker  ;  and  his  Table  Talk  contains 
some  sallies  which  would  startle  the  orthodox  if  publicly 
delivered  ;3  but  not  only  is  there  explicit  testimony  by 
his  associates  as  to  his  orthodoxy  :•*  his  own  treatise,  De 
Jure  Naturali  et  Gentium  juxta  disciplinam  Ebrceorum, 
maintains  the  ground  that  the  "  Law  of  Nature  "  which 
underlies  the  variants  of  the  Laws  of  Nations  is  limited 
to  the  precepts  and  traditions  set  forth  in  the  Talmud  as 
delivered  by  Noah  to  his  posterity. ^  Le  Clerc  said  of 
the  work,  justly  enough,  that  in  it  "Selden  only  copies 
the  Rabbins,  and  scarcely  ever  reasons."  He  illustrates, 
in  fact,  the  extent  to  which  a  scholar  could  in  that  day 
be  anti-clerical  without  being  rationalistic.  Like  the 
bulk  of  the  Parliamentarians,  though  without  their 
fanaticism,  he  was  thoroughly  opposed  to  the  political 
pretensions  of  the  church,*^  desiring,  however,  to  leave 
episcopacy  alone,  as  a  matter  outside  of  legislation, 
when  the  House  of  Commons  abolished  it.  Yet  he 
spoke  of  the  name  of  Puritan  as  one  which  he  "  trusted 
he  was  not  either  mad  enough  or  foolish  enough  to 
deserve."^  There  were  thus  in  the  Parliamentary  party 
men  of  very  different  shades  of  opinion.  The  largest 
party,  perhaps,  was  that  of  the  fanatics   who,   as   Mrs. 

'  "  For  two  generations  the  effort  to  construct  morality  on  a  philoso- 
phical basis  takes  more  or  less  the  form  of  answers  to  Hobbes " 
(Sidg-wick,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ethics,  3rd  ed.  p.  169). 

-  As  when  he  presents  the  law  of  Nature  as  "  dictating-  peace,  for  a 
means  of  the  conservation  of  men  in  multitudes"  (Leviathan,  ch.  xv. 
Morley's  ed.  p.  77). 

3  See  the  headings,  COUNCIL,  Religion,  etc. 

■»  G.  W.  Johnson,  Memoirs  of  John  Selden,  1835,  pp.  348,  362. 

5  Id.  p.  264. 

*"  Id.  pp.  258,  302. 

7  Id.  p.  302.  Cp.  in  the  Table  Talk,  art.  Trinity,  his  view  of  the 
Roundheads. 


92  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY 

Hutchinson — herself  fanatical  enough — tells  concerning 
her  husband,  "  would  not  allow  him  to  be  religious 
because  his  hair  was  not  in  their  cut."'  Next  in  strength 
were  the  more  or  less  devout  and  anti-clerical  but  less 
pious  Scripturalists,  of  whom  Selden  was  the  most 
illustrious.  By  far  the  smallest  group  of  all  were  the 
freethinkers,  men  of  their  type  being  as  often  repelled 
by  the  zealotry  of  the  Puritans  as  by  the  sacerdotalism 
of  the  State  clergy.  The  Rebellion,  in  short,  though  it 
evoked  rationalism,  was-not  evoked  by  it. 

When,  however,  we  turn  from  the  higher  literary 
propaganda  to  the  verbal  and  other  transitory  debates  of 
the  period  of  the  Rebellion,  we  realise  how  much  partial 
rationalism  had  hitherto  subsisted  without  notice.  In 
that  immense  ferment  some  very  advanced  opinions, 
such  as  quasi-Anarchism  in  politics-  and  anti-Scrip- 
turalism  in  religion,  were  more  or  less  directly  professed. 
In  1645-6  the  authorities  of  the  City  of  London,  alarmed 
at  the  unheard-of  amount  of  discussion,  petitioned 
Parliament  to  put  down  all  private  meetings  \^  and  on 
February  6th,  1646  (n.s.),  a  solemn  fast,  or  "day  of 
publique  humiliation,"  was  proclaimed  on  the  score  of 
the  increase  of  "errors,  heresies,  and  blasphemies." 
On  the  same  grounds,  the  Presbyterian  party  in  Parlia- 
ment pressed  an  "  Ordinance  for  the  suppression  of 
Blasphemies  and  Heresies,"  which,  long  held  back  by 
Vane  and  Cromwell,  was  carried  in  their  despite  in 
1648,  by  large  majorities,  when  the  royalists  renewed 
hostilities.  It  enacted  the  death  penalty  against  all  who 
should  deny  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  the  divinity  of 

'  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchi)iso>i,  ed.  1810,  i,  181.      Cp.  i,  292;  ii.  44. 

-  Cp.  Overton's  pamphlet,  An  Arroiv  against  all  Tyrants  and  Tyranny 
(1646),  cited  in  the  History  of  Passive  Obedience  since  the  Reformation, 
1689,  i,  59;  Pt.  ii  of  Thomas  Edwards'  Gangrcena,  1646,  p.  179;  and 
Pt.  iii,  pp.  14-17. 

3  Lords  Journals,  January  i6th,  1645-6  ;  cp.  Gardiner,  Hist,  of  the 
Civil  War,  ed.  1893,  iii,  11. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY         93 

Christ,  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  a  day  of  judgment, 
or  a  future  state  ;  and  prescribed  imprisonment  for 
Arminianism,  rejection  of  infant  baptism,  anti-Sabba- 
tarianism, anti-Presbyterianism,  or  defence  of  the 
doctrine  of  Purgatory  or  the  use  of  images/  And  of 
aggressive  heresy  there  are  some  noteworthy  traces. 
In  a  pamphlet  entitled  "  Hell  Broke  Loose  :  a  Catalogue 
of  the  many  spreading  Errors,  Heresies,  and  Blas- 
phemies of  these  Times,  for  which  we  are  to  be 
humbled  "  (March  9th,  1646,  n.s.),  the  first  entry  is  a 
citation  of  the  notable  thesis,  "  That  the  Scripture, 
whether  a  true  manuscript  or  no,  whether  Hebrew, 
Greek,  or  English,  is  but  humane,  and  not  able  to 
discover  a  divine  God."  This  is  cited  from  "  Pilgrim  of 
Saints,  by  Clarkson,"  presumably  the  Lawrence 
Clarkson  who  for  his  book  The  Single  Eye  was  sen- 
tenced by  resolution  of  Parliament  on  September  27th, 
1650,  to  be  imprisoned,  the  book  being  burned  by  the 
common  hangman.  He  is  further  cited  as  teaching  that 
even  unbaptised  persons  may  preach  and  baptise.  Of 
the  other  heresies  cited  the  principal  is  the  old  denial 
of  a  future  life. 

Against  the  furious  intolerance  of  the  Puritan  legisla- 
ture some  pleaded  with  new  zeal  for  tolerance  all  round. 
Notable  among  the  new  parties  were  the  Levellers,  who 
insisted  that  the  State  should  leave  religion  entirely 
alone,  tolerating  all  creeds,  including  even  atheism  ;  and 
who  put  forward  a  new  and  striking  ethic,  grounding  on 
"  universal  reason  "  the  right  of  all  men  to  the  soil.-  In 
the  strictly  theological  field,  the  most  striking  innova- 
tion, apart  from  simple  Unitarianism,  is  the  denial  of 
the  eternity  or  even  the  existence  of  future  torments — a 
position  first  taken  up,  as  we  have  seen,  either  by  the 
continental  Socinians  or  by  the  unnamed  English 
heretics  of  the  Tudor  period,  who  passed  on  their  heresy 

'  Green,  Short  History,  ch.  viii,  §  8,  pp.  551-2  ;  Gardiner,  Hist,  of  the 
Civil  War,  ed.  1893,  iv,  22. 

-  See  G.  P.  Gooch's  History  of  Democratic  Ideas  in  England  in  the 
Seventeenth  Century,  1898,  ch.  vi. 


94  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY 

to  the  time  of  Marlowe.'  In  this  connection  the  learned 
booklet-  entitled  Of  the  Torments  of  Hell :  the  founda- 
tions and  pillars  thereof  discovered,  searched,  shaken,  and 
removed  (1658)  was  rightly  thought  worth  translating 
into  French  by  d'Holbach  over  a  century  later.' 

Humane  feeling  of  this  kind  counted  for  much  in  the 
ferment.  The  Presbyterian  Thomas  Edwards,  writing 
about  the  same  time,  speaks  of  "  monsters  "  unheard-of 
theretofore,  "  now  common  among  us — as  denying  the 
Scriptures,  pleading  for-a  toleration  of  all  religions  and 
worships,  yea,  for  blasphemy,  and  denying  there  is  a 
God."^  Among  the  180  sects  named  by  him^  there  were 
"Libertines,"  "  Antiscripturists,"  "Skeptics  and  Oues- 
tionists,"*"  who  held  nothing  save  the  doctrine  of  free 
speech  and  liberty  of  conscience  \^  as  well  as  Socinians, 
Arians,  and  Anti-trinitarians  ;  and  he  speaks  of  serious 
men  who  had  not  only  abandoned  their  religious  beliefs, 
but  sought  to  persuade  others  to  do  the  same.^  Under 
the  rule  of  Cromwell,  tolerant  as  he  was  of  Christian 
sectarianism,  and  even  of  Unitarianism  as  represented 
by  Biddle,  the  more  advanced  heresies  would  get  small 
liberty.  It  was  only  privately  that  such  men  as  Henry 
Marten  and  Thomas  Chaloner,  the  regicides,  could  avow 
themselves  to  be  of  "the  natural  religion."  The  state- 
ment of  Bishop  Burnet,  following  Clarendon,  that  "many 
of  the  republicans  began  to  profess  deism,"  cannot  be 
taken  literally,  though  it  is  broadly  intelligible  that 
"almost  all  of  them  were  for  destroying  all  clergymen 

and    for   leaving    religion    free,    as    they  called    it, 

without  either  encouragement  or  restraint." 

'  Above,  pp.  26-29. 

-  In  the  British  Museum  copy  the  name   Richardson  is  penned,  not  in 
a  contemporary  hand,  at  the  end  oi  the  preface. 
3  The  fourth  English  edition  appeared  in  1754. 

*  Gangrcena,  1645  (or  1646),  ep.  ded.  (p.  5).  Cp.  Second  Part  of  Gan- 
grcena,  1646,  pp.  178-9,  and  BaiHe's  Letters,  ed.  1841,  ii,  234-7  '■>  ''•'  393- 

s  Gaiigrcena^  pp.  iS-36. 

^  Id.  p.  15.     As  to  other  sects  mentioned  by  him,  cp.  Tayler,  p.  194. 

^  On  the  intense  aversion  of  most  of  the  Presbyterians  to  toleration, 
see  Tayler,  Retrospect  of  Relig.  Life  of  Eng.  p.  136.  They  insisted, 
rightly  enough,  that  the  principle  was  never  recognised  in  the  Bible. 

*  See  the  citations  in  Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  i,  347  ;   i-vol.  ed.  p.  196. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijlh  CENTURY         95 

See  Burnet's  History  of  His  Oii'n  Time,  B.  I,  ed.  1838,  p.  43. 
The  phrase,  "They  were  for  pulling-  down  the  churclies,"  aijain, 
cannot  be  taken  literally.     Of  those  who  "  pretended  to  little  or 
no  religion  and  acted  only  upon  the  principles  of  civil  liberty," 
Burnet  goes  on  to  name  Sidney,  Henry  Nevill,  Marten,  Wild- 
man,  and  Harrington.   The  last  was  certainly  of  Hobbes's  way  of 
thinking-  in  philosophy  (Croom  Robertson,  Hobbes,  p.  223,  note); 
but  Wildman  was  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Anabaptist  petition 
to  Charles  H   in  1658  (Clarendon,  Hist,  of  the  Rebellion,  B.  xv, 
ed.  1843,  p.  855).     As  to  Marten   and   Challoner,  see   Carlyle's 
Cromwell,     iii,    194  ;     and    articles    in    Nat.     Diet,     of  Biog. 
Vaug'han    {Hist,    of  England,    1840,    ii,    477,    note)    speaks   of 
Walwyn  and  Overton  as  "  among  the  freethinkers  of  the  times 
of  the   Commonwealth."     They  were,  however,   Biblicists,  not 
unbelievers.      Professor  Gardiner  {History  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  Protectorate ,  ii,  253,  citing-  a  News-letter  in  the  Clarendon 
MSS.)  finds  record    in    1653  of   "a   man   [who]   preached   flat 
atheism  in  Westminster  Hall,  uninterrupted  by  the  soldiers  of 
the  guard  "j  but  this  obviously  counts  for  little. 
But  between  the  advance  in  spectilation  forced  on  by 
the  disputes  themselves,  and  the  usual  revolt  against  the 
theological  spirit  after  a  long  and  ferocious  display  of  it, 
there   spread    even    under   the    Commonwealth    a    new 
temper  of  secularity.     On   the  one  hand,  the  tempera- 
mental distaste  for  theology,  antinomian   or  other,  took 
form   in  the  private  associations  for  scientific   research 
which  were  the  antecedents  of  the  Royal  Society.     On 
the    other    hand,   the   spirit    of   religious  doubt   spread 
widely  in  the  middle  and  upper  classes  ;  and  it  is  note- 
worthy that  the  term   "rationalist"  emerges  as  the  label 
of  a  sect  of  Independents  or  Presbyterians  who  declare 
that  "  What  their  reason   dictates  to  them  in  church  or 
State    stands    for   good,   until    they  be   convinced    with 
better.'"     The  "  rationalism,"  so-called,  of  that  genera- 
tion remained  ostensibly  scriptural  ;  but  on  other  lines 
thought   went   further.     Of  atheism    there   are    at   this 
stage    only     dubious     biographical    and     controversial 
traces,  such  as  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  characterisation  of  a 
Nottingham   physician,  possibly  a  deist,  as  a  "  horrible 
atheist,""   and    the    Rev.   John    Dove's    Confutation   of 

'  See  above,  vol.  i,  p.  5. 

^  Memoirs  of  Colotiel  Hutchinson,  3rd  ed.  i,  200. 


96  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyth  CENTURY 

Atheism  (1640),  which  does  not  bear  out  its  title. 
Ephraim  Pagitt,  in  his  Heresiography  (1644),  speaks 
loosely  of  an  "  atheistical  sect  who  affirm  that  men's 
soules  sleep  with  them  until  the  day  of  judgment'''' ;  and 
tells  of  some  alleged  atheist  merely  that  he  "  mocked 
and  jeared  at  Christ's  Incarnation."'  Similarly  a  work, 
entitled  Dispute  betzvixt  an  Atheist  and  a  Christian 
(1646),  shows  the  existence  not  of  atheists,  but  of  deists, 
and  the  deist  in  the  dialogue  is  a  Fleming. 

More  trustworthy  is  the  allusion  in  Nathaniel 
Culverwel's  Discourse  of  the  Light  of  Nature  (written  in 
1646,  published   posthumously  in  1652)  to  "those  lumps 

and   dunghills  of  all  sects that  young   and    upstart 

generation  of  gross  anti-scripturalists,  that  have  a 
powder-plot  against  the  Gospel,  that  would  very  com- 
pendiously behead  all  Christian  religion  at  one  blow,  a 
device  which  old  and  ordinary  heretics  were  never 
acquainted  withal."-  The  reference  is  presumably  to 
the  followers  of  Lawrence  Clarkson.  Yet  even  here  we 
have  no  mention  of  atheism,  which  is  treated  as  some- 
thing almost  impossible.  Indeed,  the  very  course  of 
arguing  in  favour  of  a  "  Light  of  Nature"  seems  to  have 
brought  suspicion  on  Culverwel  himself,  who  shows  a 
noticeable  liking  for  Herbert  of  Cherbury.^  He  is, 
however,  as  may  be  inferred  from  his  angry  tone  towards 
anti-scripturalists,  substantially  orthodox,  and  not  very 
important. 

t 

It  is  contended  for  Culverwel  by  modern  admirers  (ed.  cited, 
p.  xxi)  that  he  deserves  the  praise  given  by  Hallam  to  the  later 
Bishop  Cumberland  as  "the  first  Christian  writer  who  sought 
to  establish  systematically  the  principle  of  moral  right  indepen- 
dent of  revelation."  [See  above,  p.  go,  the  similar  tribute  of 
Mosheim  to  Ames.]  But  Culverwel  does  not  really  make  this 
attempt.  His  proposition  is  that  reason,  "the  candle  of  the 
Lord,"  discovers  "  that  all  the  moral  law  is  founded  in  natural 
and  common  light,   in  the  light  of   reason,  and  that  there  is 

'  Heresiography :    Tlie  Heretics   and    Sectaries  of  these  Ti)iies,    1644, 
Epistle  Dedicatory. 

^  Discourse,  ed.  1857,  p.  226. 

3  Dr.  J,  Brown's  pref.  to  ed.  of  1857,  p.  xxii. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY         97 

nothing  in  the  mysteries  of  the  Gospel  contrary  to  the  light  of 
reason  "  (Introd.  end)  ;  yet  he  contends  not  only  that  faith 
transcends  reason,  but  that  Abraham's  attempt  to  slay  his  son 
was  a  dutiful  obeying  of  "the  God  of  nature"  (pp.  225-6). 
He  does  not  achieve  the  simple  step  of  noting  that  the  recogni- 
tion of  revelation  as  such  must  be  performed  by  reason,  and 
thus  makes  no  advance  on  the  position  of  Bacon,  much  less  on 
those  of  Pecock  and  Hooker.  His  object,  indeed,  was  not  to 
justifv  orthodoxy  by  reason  against  rationalistic  unbelief,  but 
to  make  a  case  for  reason  in  theology  against  the  Lutherans 
and  others  who,  "because  Socinus  has  burnt  his  wings  at  this 
candle  of  the  Lord,"  scouted  all  use  of  it  (Introd.).  Culverwel, 
however,  was  one  of  the  learned  group  in  Emanuel  College, 
Cambridge,  whose  tradition  developed  in  the  next  generation 
into  Latitudinarianism  ;  and  he  may  be  taken  as  a  learned 
type  of  a  number  of  the  clergy  who  were  led  by  the  abundant 
discussion  all  around  them  into  professing  and  encouraging  a 
ratiocinative  habit  of  mind.  Thus  we  find  Dean  Stuart,  Clerk 
of  the  Closet  to  Charles  I,  devoting  one  of  his  short  homilies  to 
Jerome's  text,  Tcnfemus  animas  qjcae  deficiunt  a  fide  naturalilnis 
rationihus  adjtirare.  "It  is  not  enough,"  he  writes,  "  for  you 
to  rest  in  an  imaginary  faith,  and  easiness  in  beleeving,  except 
yee  know  also  what  and  why  and  how  you  come  to  that  beleef. 
Implicite  beleevers,  ignorant  beleevers,  the  adversary  may 
swallow,  but  the  understanding  beleever  hee  must  chaw,  and 
pick  bones  before  hee  come  to  assimilate  him,  and  make  him 
like  himself.  The  implicite  beleever  stands  in  an  open  field, 
and  the  enemy  will  ride  over  him  easily :  the  understanding 
beleever  is  in  a  fenced  town."  {Catholique  Divinity^  1657, 
pp.  133-4 — ^  work  written  man\'  years  earlier.) 

The  discourse  on  Atheism,  again,  in  the  posthumous 
works  of  John  Smith  of  Cambridge  (d.  1652)  is  entirely 
retrospective  ;  but  soon  another  note  is  sounded.  As 
early  as  1652,  the  year  after  the  issue  of  Hobbes's 
Leviathan,  the  prolific  Walter  Charleton,  who  had 
been  physician  to  the  king,  published  a  book  entitled 
The  Darkness  of  Atheism  expelled  hy  the  Light  of  Nature, 
wherein  he  asserted  that  England  "  hath  of  late  pro- 
duced  and  doth foster  more   swarms   of  atheistical 

monsters than  any  age,  than  any  Nation  hath  been 

infested  withal."  In  the  following  year  Henry  More, 
the  Cambridge  Platonist,  published  his  Antidote 
against   Atheism,    which    assumes    that    the    atheistic 

VOL.   II  H 


98  BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyfh  CENTURY 

way  of  thinking  had  lately  become  rather  fashionable. 
In  1654,  again,  there  is  noted'  a  treatise  called  Atheismiis 
Vapidans,  by  William  Towers,  whose  message  can  in 
part  be  inferred  from  his  title  ;-  and  in  1657  Charleton 
issued  his  Immortality  of  the  Human  Soul  demonstrated 
by  the  Light  of  Nature,  wherein  the  argument,  which 
says  nothing  of  revelation,  is  so  singularly  unconfident, 
and  so  much  broken  in  upon  by  excursus,  as  to  leave  it 
doubtful  whether  the  author  was  more  lacking  in  dialectic 
skill  or  in  conviction.  And  traces  of  unbelief  multiply. 
Baxter  and  Howe  were  agreed,  in  1658,  that  there  were 
both  "  infidels  and  papists  "  at  work  around  them  ;  and  in 
1659  Howe  writes  :  "  I  know  some  leading  men  are  not 
Christians."^  "Seekers,  Vanists,  and  Behmenists  "  are 
specified  as  groups  to  which  both  infidels  and  papists 
attach  themselves.  And  Howe,  recognising  how 
religious  strifes  promote  unbelief,  calls  his  hearers  to 
witness  "  What  a  cloudy,  wavering,  uncertain,  lank, 
spiritless  thing  is  the  faith  of  Christians    in    this  age 

become! Most  content  themselves  to  profess  it  only 

as  the  religion  of  their  country. "•♦ 

From  the  Origines  Sacrce  (1662)  of  Stillingfleet, 
further,  it  would  appear  that  both  deism  and  atheism 
were  becoming  more  and    more  common. ^     He   states 


'  Fabricius,    Delectus  Argumentorum   et    Syllabus    Scriptoruni,    1725, 

P-  341- 

^  No  copy  in  British  Museum. 

3  Urwick,  Life  of  John  Hoive,  with  1846  ed.  of  Howe's  Select  Works, 
pp.  xiii,  xix.  Urwick,  a  learned  evangelical,  fully  admits  the  presence 
of  "infidels  "  on  both  sides  in  the  politics  of  the  time. 

■*  Discourse  Concerning  Union  Ajnong  Protestants,  ed.  cited,  pp.  146, 
156,  158.  In  the  preface  to  his  treatise,  The  Redeemer's  Tears  Wept  over 
Lost  Soi/ls,  Howe  complains  of  "  the  atheism  of  some,  the  avowed  mere 
theism  of  others,"  and  of  a  fashionable  habit  of  ridiculing-  relig-ion.  This 
sermon,  however,  appears  to  have  been  first  published  in  1584  ;  and  the 
date  of  its  application  is  uncertain. 

5  The  preface  begins  :  "  It  is  neither  to  satisfie  the  importunity  of 
friends,  nor  to  prevent  false  copies  (which  and  such  like  excuses  I  know 
are  expected  in  usual  prefaces),  that  I  have  adventured  abroad  this 
following-  treatise  :  but  it  is  out  of  a  just  resentment  of  the  affronts  and 
indignities  which  have  been  cast  on  religion,  by  such  who  account  it  a 
matter  of  judgment  to  disbelieve  the  Scriptures,  and  a  piece  of  wit  to 
dispute  themselves  out  of  the  possibihty  of  being  happy  in  another 
world." 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyih  CENTURY  99 

that  "  the  most  popular  pretences  of  the  atheists  of  our 
age  have  been  the  irreconcilableness  of  the  account  of 
times  in  Scripture  with  that  of  the  learned  and  ancient 
heathen  nations,  the  inconsistency  of  the  belief  of  the 
Scriptures  with  the  principles  of  reason  ;  and  the  account 
which  may  be  given  of  the  origin  of  things  from  the 
principles  of  philosophy  without  the  Scriptures." 
These  positions  are  at  least  as  natural  to  deists  as  to 
atheists  ;  and  Stillingfleet  is  later  found  protesting 
against  the  policy  of  some  professed  Christians  who 
give  up  the  argument  from  miracles  as  valueless.'  His 
whole  treatise,  in  short,  assumes  the  need  for  meeting  a 
very  widespread  unbelief  in  the  Bible,  though  it  rarely 
deals  with  the  atheism  of  which  it  so  constantly  speaks. 
After  the  Restoration,  naturally,  all  the  new  tendencies 
were  greatly  reinforced,"  alike  by  the  attitude  of  the  king 
and  his  companions,  all  influenced  by  French  culture, 
and  by  the  general  reaction  against  Puritanism.  What- 
ever ways  of  thought  had  been  characteristic  of  the 
Puritans  were  now  in  more  or  less  complete  disfavour; 
the  belief  in  witchcraft  was  scouted  as  much  on  this 
ground  as  on  any  other  ;3  and  the  deistic  doctrines  found 
a  ready  audience  among  royalists,"*  whose  enemies  had 
been  above  all  things  Bibliolaters. 

We  gather  this,  however,  still  from  the  apologetic 
treatises  and  the  historians,  not  from  new  deistic 
literature  ;  for  in  virtue  of  the  Press  Licensing  Act, 
passed  on  behalf  of  the  church  in  1662,  no  heretical 
book  could  be  printed  ;  so  that  Herbert  was  thus  far  the 
only  professed  deistic  writer  in  the  field,  and  Hobbes 
the  only  other  of  similar  influence.  Baxter,  writing  in 
1655  on  The  Unreasonableness  of  Infidelity^  handles 
chiefly  Anabaptists  ;  and  in  his  Reformed  Pastor  (1656), 

'  See  B.  ii,  ch.  10.      P.  338,  3rd  ed.  1666. 

^  Cp.  Glanvill,  pref.  Address  to  his  Scepsis  Scientifica,  Owen's  ed.  1S85, 
pp.  Iv-lvii ;  and  Henry  Mora's  Divine  Dialogues,  Dial,  i,  ch.  32. 

3  Cp.  Lecky,  Rationalism  in  Europe,  i,  109. 

^  There  is  evidence  that  Charles  II,  at  least  up  to  the  time  of  his 
becoming-  a  Catholic,  was  himself  at  heart  a  deist.  See  Burnet's  History 
of  his  O'ii'n  Time,  ed.  1838,  pp.  61,  175,  and  notes  ;  and  cp.  rets,  in 
Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  i,  362,  note ;  i-vol.  ed.  p.  205. 


loo        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY 


though  he  avows  that  "  the  common  ignorant  people," 
seeing  the  endless  strifes  of  the  clergy,  "are  hardened 
by  us  against  all  religion,"  the  only  specific  unbelief  he 
mentions  is  that  of  "  the  devil's  own  agents,  the 
unhappy    Socinians,"    who     had    written    "so     many 

treatises  for unity  and  peace."'     But  in  \{\s  Reasons 

of  the  Christian  Religion^  issued  in  1667,  he  thinks  fit  to 
prove  the  existence  of  God  and  a  future  state,  and  the 
truth  and  the  supernatural  character  of  the  Christian 
religion.  Any  deist  or  "atheist  who  took  the  trouble  to 
read  through  it  would  have  been  rewarded  by  the 
discovery  that  the  learned  author  has  annihilated  his 
own  case.  In  his  first  part  he  affirms:  "If  there  were 
no  life  of  Retribution  after  this,  Obedience  to  God  would 
be  finally  men's  loss  and  ruine  :  But  Obedience  to  God 
shall  not  be  finally  men's  loss  and  ruine  :  Ergo,  there  is 
another  life."-  In  the  second  part  he  writes  that 
"  Man's  personal  interest  is  an  unfit  rule  and  measure 
of  God's  goodness  ";3  and,  going  ox\  to  meet  the  new 
argument  against  Christianity  based  on  the  inference 
that  an  infinity  of  stars  are  inhabited,  he  writes  : — 

Ask  Tany  man  who  knoweth  these  thuigs  whether  all  this 
earth  be  any  more  in  comparison  of  the  whole  creation  than 
one  Prison  is   to  a  Kingdom  or  Empire,  or  the  paring  of  one 

nail in  comparison  of  the  whole  body.     And  if  God  should 

cast  off  all  this  earth,  and  use  all  the  sinners  in  it  as  they 
deserve,  it  is  no  more  sign  of  a  want  of  benignity  or  mere}'  in 
him  than  it  is  for  a  King  to  cast  one  subject  of  a  inillio7i  into  a 

jail or  than  it  is  to  pare  a  inan''s  nails,  or  cut  off  a  wart,  or 

a  hair,  or  to  pull  out  a  rotten  aking  tooth.'' 

Thus  the  second  part  absolutely  destroys  one  of  the 
fundamental  positions  of  the  first.  No  semblance  of 
levity  on  the  part  of  the  freethinkers  could  compare  with 
the  profound  intellectual  insincerity  of  such  a  propa- 
ganda as  this  ;  and  that  deism  and  atheism  continued  to 
gain   ground   is   proved   by  the  multitude  of  apologetic 

*   The  Reformed  Pastor,  abr.  ed.  1826,  pp.  236,  239. 

^  Work  cited,  ed.  1667,  p.  136.     The  proposition  is  reiterated. 

3  Id.  p.  388.  4  Jd.  pp.  388-9. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyth  CENTURY        loi 

treatises.  Even  in  church-ridden  Scotland  they  were 
found  necessary  ;  at  least  the  young  advocate  George 
Mackenzie,  afterwards  to  be  famous  as  the  "  bloody 
Mackenzie "  of  the  time  of  persecution,  thought  it 
expedient  to  make  his  first  appearance  in  literature  with 
a  Religio  Stoici {i66t^)^  wherein  he  sets  out  with  a  refuta- 
tion of  atheism.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  his  counsel 
to  Christians  to  watch  the  "  horror-creating  beds  of 
dying  atheists"' — a  false  pretence  as  it  stands — repre- 
sented any  knowledge  whatever  of  professed  atheism  in 
his  own  country  ;  and  his  discussion  of  the  subject  is 
wholly  on  the  conventional  lines — notably  so  when  he 
uses  the  customary  plea  that  the  theist  runs  no  risk  even 
if  there  is  no  future  life,  whereas  the  atheist  runs  a 
tremendous  risk  if  there  is  one;""  but  when  he  writes  of 
"  that  mystery  why  the  greatest  wits  are  most  frequently 
the  greatest  atheists, "^  he  must  be  presumed  to  refer  at 
least  to  deists.  And  other  passages  show  that  he  had 
listened  to  freethinking  arguments.  Thus  he  speaks^  of 
those  who  "  detract  from  Scripture  by  attributing  the 
production  of  miracles  to  natural  causes  ";  and  again 5  of 
those  who  "  contend  that  the  Scriptures  are  written  in  a 
mean  and  low  style  ;  are  in  some  places  too  mysterious, 
in  others  too  obscure  ;  contain  many  things  incredible, 
many  repetitions,  and  many  contradictions."  His  own 
answers  are  conspicuously  weak.  In  the  latter  passage 
he  continues  :  "  But  those  miscreants  should  consider 
that  much  of  the  Scripture's  native  splendour  is  impaired 
by  its  translators";  and  as  to  miracles  he  makes  the 
inept  answer  that  if  secondary  causes  were  in  operation 
they  acted  by  God's  will  ;  going  on  later  to  suggest  on 
his  own  part  that  prophecy  may  be  not  a  miraculous 
gift,  but  "  a  natural  (though  the  highest)  perfection  of 
our  human  nature. "°  Apart  from  his  weak  dialectic,  he 
writes  in  general  with  cleverness  and  literary  finish,  but 


'  Religio  Stoici,  Edinbiirg:h,  1663,  p.  19.     The  essay  was   reprinted  in 
London  in  1693  under  the  title  of  The  Religious  Stoic. 
=*  Id.  p.  1 8.  3  Id.  p.  124.  •*  Id.  p.  76.  5  Id.  p.  69.       ^  Id.  p.  1 16. 


I02        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lytJi  CENTURY 


without  any  note  of  sincerity  ;  and  his  profession  of 
concern  that  reason  should  be  respected  in  theology^ 
is  as  little  acted  on  in  his  later  life  as  his  protest 
against  persecution."  The  inference  from  the  whole 
essay  is  that  in  Scotland,  as  in  England,  the  civil  war 
had  brought  up  a  considerable  crop  of  reasoned  unbelief; 
and  that  Mackenzie,  professed  defender  of  the  faith  as  he 
was  at  twenty-five,  and  official  persecutor  of  noncon- 
formists as  he  afterwards  became,  met  with  a  good  deal 
of  it  in  his  cultured  circle-. 

When  such  thought  could  subsist  in  the  ecclesiastical 
climate  of  Puritan  Scotland,  it  must  needs  flourish  in 
England.  In  1667  appeared  A  Pliilosophicall  Essay 
towards  an  eviction  of  the  Being  and  Attributes  of  God, 
etc.,  of  which  the  preface  proclaims  "the  bold  and 
horrid  pride  of  Atheists  and  Epicures"  who  "have 
laboured  to  introduce  into  the  world  a  general  Atheism, 
or  at  least  a  doubtful  Skepticisme  in  matters  of 
Religion."  In  1668  was  published  Meric  Casaubon's 
treatise.  Of  Credulity  and  Incredulity  in  things  Natural, 
Civil,  and  Divine,  assailing  not  only  "  the  Sadducism 
of  these    times  in    denying  spirits,   witches,"  etc.,   but 

"Epicurus and  the  juggling  and  false  dealing  lately 

used  to  bring  Atheism  into  Credit" — a  thrust  at 
Gassendi.  A  similar  polemic  is  entombed  in  a 
ponderous  folio  "  romance "  entitled  Bentivolio  and 
Urania,  by  Nathaniel  Ingelo,  D.D.,  a  fellow  first  of 
Emanuel  College,  and  afterwards  of  Queen's  College, 
Cambridge  (1660  ;  4th  ed.  amended,  1682).  The  second 
part,  edifyingly  dedicated  to  the  Earl  of  Lauderdale,  one 
of  the  worst  men  of  his  day,  undertakes  to  handle  the 
"  Atheists,  Epicureans,  and  Skepticks  ";  and  in  the 
preface  the  atheists  are  duly  vituperated;  while  Epicurus 

'  Religio  Stoici,  p.  122. 

-  This  last  is  interesting'  as  a  probable  echo  of  opinions  he  had  heard 
from  some  of  his  older  contemporaries  :  "Opinion  kept  within  its  proper 
bounds  is  an  [  =  the  Scottish  "ane"]  pure  act  of  the  mind  ;  and  so  it 
would  appear  that  to  punish  the  body  for  that  which  is  a  g'uilt  of  the 
soul  is  as  unjust  as  to  punish  one  relation  for  another"  (pref.  pp.  lo-ii). 
He  adds  that  "  the  Almighty  hath  left  no  warrand  upon  holy  record  for 
persecuting  such  as  dissent  from  us." 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyth  CENTURY        103 

is  decribed  as  a  gross  sensualist,  in  terms  of  the  legend, 
and  the  skeptics  as  "resigned  to  the  slavery  of  vice." 
In  the  sixth  book  the  atheists  are  allowed  a  momentary 
hearing  in  defence  of  their  "horrid  absurdities,"  from 
which  it  appears  that  there  were  current  arguments  alike 
anthropological  and  metaphysical  against  theism.  The 
most  competent  part  of  the  author's  own  argument, 
which  is  unlimited  as  to  space,  is  that  which  controverts 
the  thesis  of  the  invention  of  religious  beliefs  by 
"  politicians  "' — a  notion  first  put  in  currency,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  those  who  insisted  on  the  expediency  and  value 
of  such  inventions  ;  as,  Polybius  among  the  ancients, 
and  Machiavelli  among  the  moderns. 

Dr.  Ingelo's  folio  seems  to  have  had  readers  ;  but  he 
avowedly  did  not  look  for  converts  ;  and  defences  of  the 
faith    on   a  less    formidable    scale  were    multiplied.     A 
"Person   of   Honour"-  produced   in   1669  an  essay  on 
The     Unreasonableness    of    Atheism     made    Manifest, 
which,  without  supplying  any  valid  arguments,  gives 
some  explanation  of  the  growth  of  unbelief  in  terms  of 
the    political    and     other    antecedents  y     ^"d    in    1670 
appeared  Richard   Barthogge's  Divine  Goodness  Expli- 
cated and  Vindicated  from  the  Exceptions  of  the  Atheists. 
Baxter  in  1671-*  complains  that  "  infidels  are  grown  so 
numerous  and  so  audacious,  and  look  so  big  and  talk  so 
loud";    and   still    the   process  continues.      In    1672   Sir 
William    Temple    writes    indignantly    of    "  those   who 
would  pass  for  wits  in  our  age  by  saying  things  which, 
David  tells  us,  the  fool  said  in  his  heart. "^     In  the  same 
year  appeared  The  Atheist  Silenced^  by  one  J.   M.  ;   in 
1674,  Dr.  Thomas  Good's  Firmianus  et  Dubitantius,  or 
Dialogues  concerning  Atheism,  Infidelity ,  and  Popery; 

'  Work  cited,  2nd  ed.  Pt.  ii,  pp.  106-115. 

^  Said  to  be  Sir  Charles  Wolseley. 

3  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  86-7,  89-90.  This  explanation  is 
also  given  by  Bishop  Wilkins  in  his  treatise  on  Natural  Religion,  7th 
ed.  p.  354. 

■*  Replying  to  Herbert's  De  Veritate,  which  he  seems  not  to  have  read 
before. 

5  Pref.  to  Observations  upon  the  United  Provinces  of  the  Netherlands, 
in  Works,  ed.  1814,  i.  36. 


104        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lylJi  CENTURY 

in  1675,  the  posthumous  treatise  of  Bishop  Wilkins 
(d.  1672),  Of  the  Principles  and  Duties  of  Natural 
Religion,  with  a  preface  by  Tillotson  ;  and  a  Brevis 
Demonstration  with  the  modest  sub-title,  "  The  Truth  of 
Christian  ReHgion  Demonstrated  by  Reasons  the  best 
that  have  yet  been  out  in  EngHsh  ";  in  1677,  Bishop 
StiUingfleet's  Letter  to  a  Deist ;  and  in  1678  the  massive 
work  of  Cudworth  on  The  True  Intellectual  System  of 
the  Universe,  attacking  atheism  (not  deism)  on  philo- 
sophic lines  which  sadly  compromised  the  learned 
author.'  English  dialectic  being  found  insufficient, 
there  was  even  produced  in  1679  a  translation  by  the 
Rev.  Joshua  Bonhome  of  the  French  L' Atheisme  Con- 
vaincuoi  David  Dersdon,  published  twenty  years  before. 
All  of  these  works  explicitly  avow  the  abundance  of 
unbelief;  Tillotson,  himself  accused  of  it,  pronounces 
the  age  "  miserably  overrun  with  Skepticism  and  Infi- 
delity"; and  Wilkins,  avowing  that  these  tendencies 
are  common  "not  only  among  sensual  men  of  the  vulgar 
sort,  but  even  among  those  who  pretend  to  a  more  than 
ordinary  measure  of  wit  and  learning,"  attempts  to  meet 
them  by  a  purely  deistic  argument,  with  a  claim  for 
Christianity  appended,  as  if  he  were  concerned  chiefly 
to  rebut  atheism,  and  held  his  own  Christianity  on  a 
very  rationalistic  tenure.  The  fact  was  that  the 
orthodox  clergy  were  as  hard  put  to  it  to  repel 
religious  antinomianism  on  the  one  hand  as  to  repel 
atheism  on  the  other  ;  and  no  small  part  of  the  deistic 
movement  seems  to  have  been  set  up  by  the  reaction 
against  pious  lawlessness. ""  Thus  we  have  Tillotson, 
writing  as  Dean  of  Canterbury,  driven  to  plead  in 
his  preface  to  the  work  of  Wilkins  that  "  it  is  a  great 
mistake"  to  think  the  obligation  of  moral  duties  "doth 
solely  depend  upon  the  revelation  of  God's  will  made  to 
us  in  the  Holy  Scriptures."  It  was  such  reasoning  that 
brought  upon  him  the  charge  of  freethinking. 

'   Cp.  Dy7iamics  of  Religion,  pp.  87,  94-98,  iii,  112. 
-  As  to  the  religious  immoralism,  see  Mosheim,  17  Cent.  sec.  ii,  Pt. 
ii,  ch.  ii,  §  23,  and  Murdock's  notes. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY        105 

All  the  while,  the  censorship  of  the  press,  which  was 
one  of  the  means  by  which  the  clerical  party  under 
Charles  combated  heresy,  prevented  any  new  and  out- 
spoken writing  on  the  deistic  side.  The  Treatise  of 
Humane  Reason  (1674)  of  Martin  Clifford,  a  scholarly 
man-about-town,  who  was  made  Master  of  the  Charter- 
house, went  indeed  to  the  bottom  of  the  question  of 
authority  by  showing,  as  Spinoza  had  done  shortly 
before,'  that  the  acceptance  of  authority  is  itself  in  the 
last  resort  grounded  in  reason,  and  pointed  out  that 
many  modern  wars  had  been  on  subjects  of  religion. 
Still,  it  was  sufficiently  guarded  concerning  creed  to  allow 
of  his  putting  his  name  to  the  second  edition.  But  the 
tendency  of  such  claims  was  obvious  enough  to  inspire 
Boyle's  Discourse  of  Things  above  Reason  (1681),  an 
attempt  which  anticipates  Berkeley's  argument  against 
freethinking  mathematicians. ""  The  stress  of  new  dis- 
cussion is  further  to  be  gathered  from  the  work  of  Howe, 
On  the  Reconcilahleness  of  God's  Prescience  of  the  Sins 
of  Men  with  the  Wisdom  and  Sincerity  of  his  Counsels 
and  Exhortations,  produced  in  1677  at  Boyle's  request. 
As  a  modern  admirer  admits  that  the  thesis  was  a 
hopeless  one,^  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  it  did 
anything  to  lessen  doubt  in  its  own  day.  The  preface 
to  Stillingfleet's  Letter  to  a  Deist  (1677),  which  for  the 
first  time  brings  that  appellation  into  prominence  in 
English  controversy,  tacitly  abandoning  the  usual 
ascription  of  atheism  to  all  unbelievers,  avows  that  "a 
mean  esteem  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  Christian 
Religion"  has  become  very  common  "among  the 
Skepticks  of  this  Age,"  and  complains  very  much,  as 
Butler  did  sixty  years  later,  of  the  spirit  of  "  Raillery 
and  Buffoonery"  in  which  the  matter  was  too  commonly 
approached.  The  "  Letter  "  shows  that  a  multitude  of 
the  inconsistencies  and  other  blemishes  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment were  being  eagerly  discussed  on  all  hands  ;  and  it 

'   Tract.  Theol.  Polit.  c.  15. 

'  Work  cited,  pp.  10,  14,  30,  55. 

3  Dr.  Urwick,  Life  of  H owe,  as  cited,  p.  xxxii. 


io6        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

cannot  be  said  that  the  Bishop's  vindication  was  well 
calculated  to  check  the  tendency.  Indeed,  we  have  the 
angry  and  reiterated  declaration  of  Archdeacon  Parker, 
writing  in  1681,  that  "the  ignorant  and  the  unlearned 
among  ourselves  are  become  the  greatest  pretenders  to 
skepticism  ;  and  it  is  the  common  people  that  nowadays 
set  up  for  Skepticism  and  Infidelity";  that  "Atheism 
and  Irreligion  are  at  length  become  as  common  as 
Vice  and  Debauchery";  and  that  "  Plebeans  and 
Mechanicks  have  philosophised  themselves  into  Prin- 
ciples of  Impiety,  and  read  their  Lectures  of  Atheism  in 
the  Streets  and  Highways.  And  they  are  able  to 
demonstrate  out  of  the  Leviathan  that  there  is  no  God 
nor  Providence,"  and  so  on.'  As  the  Archdeacon's 
method  of  refutation  consists  mainly  in  abuse,  he  doubt- 
less had  the  usual  measure  of  success. 

Meanwhile,  during  an  accidental  lapse  of  the  press 
laws,  the  deist  Charles  Blount^  produced  his  Anima 
3Iitndi  {i6-j(^),  in  which  there  is  set  forth  a  measure  of 
cautious  unbelief:  following  it  up  (1680)  by  his  much 
more  pronounced  essay.  Great  is  Diana  of  the 
Ephesiaiis^  a  keen  attack  on  the  principle  of  revelation 
and  clericalism  in  general,  and  his  translation  of  Philo- 
stratus'  Life  of  Apollonius  of  Tyana,  so  annotated  as  to 
be  an  ingfenious  counterblast  to  the  Christian  claims. 
The  book  was  condemned  to  be  burnt  ;  and  only  the 
influence   of   Blount's  family,^  probably,  prevented   his 

^  A  Demonstration  of  the  Divine  Authority  of  the  Laiv  of  Nature  and 
of  the  CIiristia)i  Religion,  by  Samuel  Parker,  D.  D.,  1681,  pref.  The 
first  part  of  this  treatise  is  avowedly  a  popularisation  of  the  argument  of 
Cumberland's  Disquisitio  de  Legibus  NaturcE,  1672.  Parker  had  pre- 
viously published  in  Latin  a  Disputatio  de  Deo  et  Providentia  Divina, 
in  which  he  raised  the  question  An  Philosophoruni  ulli,  et  qninam  Athei 
fuernnt  (1678). 

^  Concerning  whom  see  Macaulay's  History,  ch.  xix,  ed.  1877,  ii,  411- 
412 — a  grossly  prejudiced  account.  Blount  is  there  spoken  of  as  "one 
of  the  most  unscrupulous  plagiaries  that  ever  lived,"  and  as  having 
"  stolen  "  from  Milton,  because  he  issued  a  pamphlet  "  By  Philopatris," 
largely  made  up  from  the  Areopagitica.  Compare  Macaulay's  treat- 
ment of  Locke,  who  adopted  Dudley  North's  currency  scheme  (ch.  xxi, 
vol.  ii,  p.  547). 

3  As  to  these,  see  the  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  The  statements  of  Anthony 
Wood  as  to  the  writings  of  Blount's  father,  relied  on  in  the  author's 
Dynamics  of  Religion,  appear  to  be  erroneous. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY         107 

being  prosecuted.  The  propaganda,  however,  was 
resumed  by  Blount  and  his  friends  in  small  tracts,  and 
after  his  suicide'  in  1693  these  were  collected  as  the 
Oracles  of  Reason  (1693),  his  collected  works  (without 
the  Apollonius)  appearing  in  1695.  By  this  time  the 
political  tension  of  the  Revolution  of  1688  was  over  ; 
Le  Clerc'swork  on  the  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament, 
raising  many  doubts  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, had  been  translated  in  1690  ;  Spinoza's  Tractatus 
Theologico- Politic  us  (1670)  had  been  translated  into 
English  in  1689,  and  had  impressed  in  a  similar  sense  a 
number  of  scholars ;  his  Ethica  had  given  a  new 
direction  to  the  theistic  controversy  ;  the  Boyle  Lecture 
had  been  established  for  the  confutation  of  unbelievers  ; 
and  after  the  political  convulsion  of  1688  has  subsided  it 
rains  refutations. 

Much  account  was  made  of  one  of  the  most  com- 
pendious, the  Short  and  Easy  Method  with  the  Deists 
(1697),  by  the  nonjuror  Charles  Leslie  ;  but  this  handy 
argument  (which  is  really  adopted  without  acknowledg- 
ment from  an  apologetic  treatise  by  a  French  Protestant 
refugee,  published  in  1 688-)  was  not  only  much  bantered 
by  deists,  but  was  sharply  censured  as  incompetent  by 
the  French  Protestant  Le  Clerc  ;3  and  many  other  dis- 
putants had  to  come  to  the  rescue.  A  partial  list  will 
suffice  to  show  the  rate  of  increase  of  the  ferment : — 

1683.      Dr.    Rust,  Discourse  on  the  Use  of  Reason   in Religiony 

against  Enthusiasts  and  Deists. 
1685.     Duke  of  Buckingham,  A  Short  Discourse  upon  the  Reason- 
ab/eness  of  men's  having  a  religion  or  worship  of  God. 
,,         The  Atheist  UnmasU'd.     By  a  Person  of  Honour. 
1688.     Peter  Allix,  D.D.     7?t^/7fA-zo;ix,  etc.,  as  above  cited. 
1691.     Archbishop  Tenison,  The  Folly  of  Atheism. 
,,         Discourse  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion. 

'  All  that  is  known  of  this  tragedy  is  that  Blount  loved  his  deceased 
wife's  sister  and  wished  to  marry  her  ;  but  she  held  it  unlawful,  and  he 
was  in  despair.  An  overstrungf  nervous  system  may  be  diagnosed  from 
much  of  his  writing. 

"  Reflexions  upo)i  the  Books  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  to  establish  the  Truth 
of  the  Christian  Religion,  by  Peter  Allix,  D.  D.,  i688,  i,  6-7. 

3  As  cited  by  Leslie,  Truth  of  Christianity  Demonstrated,  171 1, 
pp.  17-21. 


io8        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijtli  CENTURY 

i6gi.     John   Ray,   Wisdom  of  God  manifested  in  the  Works  of  the 
Creation.     (Many  reprints.) 

1692.  C.  Ellis,  The  Folly  of  Atheism  Demonstrated. 

,,         Bentley's  Sermons  on  Atheism.     (First  Boyle  Lectures.) 

1693.  Archbishop  Davies,  An  Anatomy  of  Atheism.     A  poem. 
,,         A  Conference  between  an  Atheist  and  his  Friend. 

1694.  J.  Goodman,  A  Wititer  Evening  Conference  between  Neigh- 

bours. 
,,        Bishop    Kidder,  A   Demonstration  of  the    Messias.     (Boyle 

Lect.) 
i'^^*95-     John  Locke,  The  Reasonableness  of  Christianity. 
,,        John  Edwards,  B.D.,  Some  Thonghts  concerning  the  Several 

Causes    and    occasions    of  Atheism.      (Directed    against 

Locke.) 

1696.  A71  Accotcnt  of  the  Growth  of  Deism  in  England. 
,,        Reflections  on  a  Pamphlet,  etc.  (the  last  named). 

,,        Sir    Charles    Wolseley,   The    Unreasonableness    of  Atheism 

Demonstrated.     (Reprint.) 
,,         Dr.  Nichols'  Conference  with  a  Theist.     Pt.    L   (Answer  to 

Blount.) 
,,        J.   Edwards,   D.D.,  A  Demonstration  of  the   Evidence   and 

Providence  of  God. 
,,        E.    Felling,  Discourse oft  the  Existence  of  God  (Vi.  II  in 

1705)- 

1697.  Stephen  Eye,  A  Discourse  concerning  Natural  and  Revealed 

Religion. 
,,         Bishop  Gastrell,    The  Certainty  and  Necessity  of  Religion. 

(Boyle  Lect.) 
,,         H.  Prideaux,  Discourse  vindicating  Christianity,  etc. 
,,         C.  Leslie,  A  Short  and  Easy  Method  with  the  Deists. 

1698.  Dr.    J.     Harris,     A    Refutation    of    Atheistical    Objections. 

(Boyle  Lect.) 
,,        Thos.  Emes,  The  Atheist  turned  Deist,  and  the  Deist  turned 
Christian. 

1699.  C.  U\dgou\d,  Proclamation  against  Atheism,  etc. 

,,        J.  Bradley,  An  Impartial  View  of  the  Truth  of  Christianity. 
(.Answer  to  Blount.) 

1700.  Bishop  Bradford,  The  Credibility  of  the  Christian  Revelation' 

(Boyle  Lect.) 
,,         Rev.  P.  Berault,  Discourses  on  the  Trinity,  Atheism,  etc. 

1 70 1.  T.  Knaggs,  Against  Atheism. 

,,         W.  Scot,  Discourses  concerning  the  zvisdom  and  goodness  of 
God. 

1702.  A  Confutation  of  Atheism. 

,,        Dr.    Stanhope,  The  Truth  and  Excellency  of  the   Christian 
Religion.     (Boyle  Lect.) 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY        109 

1704.  An  Antidote  of  Atheism  (?  Reprint  of  More). 

1705.  Translation  of  Herbert's  Ancient  Religion  of  the  Gentiles. 
,,         Charles  Gildon,  The  Deist's  Manual  (a  recantation). 

,,        Ed.     Pelling-,    Discourse    concerning  the    existence   of  God. 

Part  II. 
,,         Dr.    Samuel    Clarke,   A    Demonstration    of  the   Being  and 

Attributes  of  God,  etc.     (Boyle  Lect.  of  1704.) 

1706.  A  Preseivative  against  Atheism  and  Infidelity. 

,,  Th.  Wise,  B.D.,  A  Confutation  of  the  Reason  and  Philosophy 
of  Atheism  (recast  and  abridgment  of  Cudworth). 

,,  T.  Oldfield,  Mille  Testes  ;  against  the  Atheists,  Deists,  and 
Skepticks. 

,,         The  Case  of  Deisin  ficlly  and  fairly  stated,  with  Dialogue ,  eic, 

1707.  Dr.  John  Hancock,  Arguments  to  prove  the  Being  of  a  God. 

(Boyle  Lect.) 

Still  there  was  no  new  deistic  literature  apart  from 
Toland's  Christianity  not  Mysterious  (1696)  and  his 
unauthorised  issue  (of  course  without  his  name)  of 
Shaftesbury's  Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  in  1699  ;  and 
in  that  there  is  little  direct  conflict  with  orthodoxy, 
though  it  plainly  enough  implied  that  scripturalism 
would  injuriously  affect  morals.  It  seems  at  that  date, 
perhaps  through  the  author's  objection  to  its  circulation, 
to  have  attracted  little  attention  ;  but  he  tells  that  it 
incurred  hostility.'  Blount's  famous  stratagem  of  1693"^ 
had  led  to  the  dropping  of  the  official  censorship  of  the 
press,  the  Licensing  Act  having  been  renewed  for  only 
two  years  in  1693  and  dropped  in  1695  ;  but  after  the 
prompt  issue  of  Blount's  collected  works  in  that  year, 
and  the  appearance  of  Toland's  Christianity  not 
Mysterious  in  the  next,  the  new  Blasphemy  Law  of  1698 
served    sufficiently  to  terrorise  writers  and   printers  in 

'   Characteristics,    ii,    263    [Moralists,    Pt.    ii,    §   3).     One   of  its    most 
dang-erous  positions  from  the  orthodox  point  of  view  would  be  the  thesis 
that  while  religion  could  do  either  great  good  or  great  harm  to  morals, 
atheism  could  do  neither.     (B.  I,  Pt.  iii,  §1.)     Cp.  Bacon's  Essay,  Of 
Atheism. 

^  Blount,  after  assailing'  in  anonymous  pamphlets  Bohun  the  licenser, 
induced  him  to  license  a  work  entitled  King  William  and  Queen  Mary 
Conquerors,  wYnch  infuriated  the  nation.  Macaulay  calls  the  device  "  a 
base  and  wicked  scheme."  It  was  almost  innocent  in  comparison  with 
Blount's  promotion  of  the  "  Popish  plot  "  mania.  See  Who  Killed  Sir 
Edmund  Godfrey  Berry?  by  Alfred  Marks,  1905,  pp.  133-5,  150. 


no        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY 

that  regard  for  the  time  being.'  Bare  denial  of  the 
Trinity,  of  the  truth  of  the  Christian  religion,  or  of  the 
divine  authority  of  the  Scriptures,  was  made  punishable 
by  disability  for  any  civil  office  ;  and  on  a  second  offence 
by  three  years'  imprisonment,  with  withdrawal  of  all 
legal  rights.  The  first  clear  gain  from  the  freedom  of 
the  press  was  thus  simply  a  cheapening  of  books  in 
general.  By  the  Licensing  Act  of  Charles  II,  and 
by  a  separate  patent,  the  Stationers'  Company  had  a 
monopoly  of  printing  and  selling  all  classical  authors  ; 
and  while  their  editions  were  disgracefully  bad,  the 
importers  of  the  excellent  editions  printed  in  Holland 
had  to  pay  them  a  penalty  of  6s.  8d.  on  each  copy.  By 
the  same  Act,  passed  under  clerical'  influence,  the 
number  even  of  master  printers  and  letter-founders  had 
been  reduced,  and  the  number  of  presses  and  apprentices 
strictly  limited  ;  and  the  total  effect  of  the  monopolies 
was  that  when  Dutch-printed  books  were  imported  in 
exchange  for  English,  the  latter  sold  more  cheaply  at 
Amsterdam  than  they  did  in  London,  the  English 
consumer,  of  course,  bearing  the  burden. ""  The  imme- 
diate effect,  therefore,  of  the  lapse  of  the  Licensing  Act 
must  have  been  to  cheapen  greatly  all  foreign  books  by 
removal  of  duties,  and  at  the  same  time  to  cheapen 
English  books  by  leaving  printing  free.  It  will  be  seen 
above  that  the  output  of  treatises  against  freethought  at 
once  increases  in  1696.  But  the  revolution  of  1688,  like 
the  Great  Rebellion,  had  doubtless  given  a  new  stimulus 
to  freethinking  ;  and  the  total  effect  of  freer  trade  in 
books,  even  with  a  veto  on  "blasphemy,"  could  only  be 
to  further  it.     This  was  ere  long  to  be  made  plain. 


Alongside  of  the  more  popular  and  native  influences, 
there  were  at  work  others,  foreign  and  more  academic  ; 

^  The  Act  of  1698  had  been  preceded  by  a  proclamation  of  the  king-, 
dated  February  24th,  1697. 

^  See  Locke's  notes  on  the  Licensing-  Act  in  Lord  King-'s  Life  of  Lode, 
1829,  pp.  203-6;  Fox  Bourne's  Life  of  Locke,  .ii,  313-4;  Macaulay's 
History,  Student's  ed.  ii,  504. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY        in 

and  even  in  professedly  orthodox  writers  there  are  signs 
of  the  influence  of  deistic  thought.  Thus  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  i^^-Z/^/b  Medici  {wviitQw  about  1634,  published 
1642)  has  been  repeatedly  characterised'  as  tending  to 
promote  deism  by  its  tone  and  method  ;  and  there  can 
be  no  question  that  it  assumes  a  great  prevalence  of 
critical  unbelief,  to  which  its  attitude  is  an  odd  combina- 
tion of  humorous  cynicism  and  tranquil  dogmatism, 
often  recalling  Montaigne,^  and  at  times  anticipating 
Emerson.  There  is  little  savour  of  confident  belief  in 
the  smiling  maxim  that  "  to  confirm  and  establish  our 
belief  'tis  best  to  argue  with  judgments  below  our  own  "; 
or  in  the  avowal,  "  in  divinity  I  love  to  keep  the  road  ; 
and  though  not  in  an  implicit  yet  an  humble  faith, 
follow  the  great  wheel  of  the  church,  by  which  I  move."^ 
The  pose  of  the  typical  believer  :  "  I  can  answer  all  the 
objections  of  vSatan  and  my  rebellious  reason  with  that 
odd  resolution  I  learned  of  Tertullian,  Certiun  est  quia 
impossibile  est,'"''  tells  in  his  case  of  no  anxious  hours  ; 
and  such  smiling  incuriousness  is  not  promotive  of  con- 
viction in  others,  especially  when  followed  by  a  recital 
of  some  of  the  many  insoluble  dilemmas  of  Scripture. 
When  he  reasons  he  is  merely  self-subversive,  as  in  the 
saying,  "  'Tis  not  a  ridiculous  devotion  to  say  a  prayer 
before  a  game  at  tables  ;  for  even  in  sortileges  and 
matters  of  greatest  uncertainty  there  is  a  settled  and^re- 
ordered  course  of  effects  ";5  and  after  remarking  that  the 
notions  of  Fortune  and  astral  influence  "  have  perverted 
the  devotion  of  many  into  atheism,"  he  proceeds  to  avow 
that  his  many  doubts  never  inclined  him  "  to  any  point  of 

'  Tr'm'ms,  Fnydenker-Lexicoii,  1759,  p.  120;  Piinjer,  i,  291,  300-1.  Mr. 
A.  H.  BuUeii,  in  his  introduction  to  his  ed.  of  Marlowe  (1885,  vol.  i, 
p.  Iviii),  remarks  that  Browne,  who  "kept  the  road"  in  divinity,  "exposed 
the  vulnerable  points  in  the  Scriptural  narratives  with  more  acumen  and 
gusto  than  the  whole  army  of  freethinkers,  from  Anthony  Collins  down- 
wards." This  is  of  course  an  extravagfance,  but,  as  Mr.  Bullen  remarks 
in  the  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  vii,  66,  Browne  discusses  "  with  evident 
relish"  the  "seeming'  absurdities  in  the  Scriptural  narrative." 

^  Browne's  Annotator  points  to  the  derivation  of  his  skepticism  from 
"that  excellent  French  writer  Monsieur  Mountaign,  in  whom  I  often 
•  trace  him"  (Sayle's  ed.  1904,  i,  p.  xviii.). 

3  Religio  Medici,  i,  6.  •*  Id.  i,  9.  5  Id.  i,  18. 


112        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 


infidelity  or  desperate  positions  of  atheism  ;  for  I  have 
been  these  many  years  of  opinion  there  never  was  any."' 
The  broad  fact  remains  that  he  avows  "  reason  is  a  rebel 
unto  faith";  and  in  his  later  treatise  on  Vulgar  Errors 
(1645)  he  shows  much  of  the  practical  play  of  the  new 
skepticism.-  Yet  it  is  on  record  that  in  1664,  on  the 
trial  of  two  women  for  witchcraft,  Browne  declared  that 
the  fits  suffered  from  by  the  children  said  to  have  been 
bewitched  "were  natural,  but  heightened  by  the  devil's 
cooperating  with  the  malice  of  the  witches,  at  whose 
instance  he  did  the  villainies. "^  This  amazing  deliver- 
ance is  believed  to  have  "  turned  the  scale  "  in  the  minds 
of  the  jury  against  the  poor  women,  and  they  were 
sentenced  by  the  sitting  judge,  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  to  be 
hanged.  It  would  seem  that  in  Browne's  latter  years 
the  irrational  element  in  him  overpowered  the  rational. 
In  other  men,  happily,  the  progression  was  different. 

The  opening  even  of  Jeremy  Taylor's  Diictor 
Diihitantium,  so  far  as  it  goes,  falls  little  short  of  the 
deistic  position.'^  A  new  vein  of  rationalism,  too,  is 
opened  in  the  theological  field  by  the  great  Cambridge 
scholar  John  Spencer,  whose  Discourse  concerning 
Prodigies  (1663  ;  2nd  ed.  1665),  though  quite  orthodox 
in  its  main  positions,  has  in  part  the  effect  of  a  plea  for 
naturalism  as  against  supernaturalism  ;  and  whose  great 
work,  De  legibus  Hehrceorum  (1685),  is,  apart  from 
Spinoza,  the  most  scientific  view  of  Hebrew  institu- 
tions produced  before  the  rise  of  German  theological 
rationalism  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Holding  most  of  the  Jewish  rites  to  have  been  planned 
by  the   deity  as   substitutes   for  or   safeguards  against 

'  Reh'gio  Medici,  i,  20. 

-  By  an  odd  error  of  the  press,  Browne  is  made  in  Mr.  Sayle's  excel- 
lent reprint  (p.  108)  to  begin  a  sentence  :  "  I  do  confess  I  am  an  Atheist. 
I  cannot  persuade  myself  to  honour  that  the  world  adores."  The  passage 
should  obviously  read  :  "to  that  subterraneous  Idol  [avarice]  and  God  of 
the  Earth  I  do  confess  I  am  an  Atheist,"  etc. 

3  Hutchinson,  Historical  Essay  Concerning  Witchcraft,  1718,  p.  118; 
2nd  ed.  1720,  p.  151. 

"  Cp.  Whewell,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Moral  Philosophy,  ed.  1862, 

P-  ZZ- 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY        113 

those  of  the  Gentiles  which  they  resembled,  he  uncon- 
sciously laid,  with  Herbert,  the  foundations  of  com- 
parative hierology,  bringing  to  the  work  a  learning 
which  is  still  serviceable  to  scholars.'  And  there  were 
yet  other  new  departures  by  clerical  writers,  who  of 
course  exhibit  the  difficulty  of  attaining  a  consistent 
rationalism.  One  clergyman,  Joseph  Glanvill,  is  found 
publishing  a  treatise  on  The  Vanity  of  Dogmatising 
(1661  ;  amended  in  1665  under  the  title  Scepsis  Scien- 
tijica),  wherein,  with  careful  reservation  of  religion,  the 
spirit  of  critical  science  is  applied  to  the  ordinary  pro- 
cesses of  opinion  with  much  energy, and  the  "mechanical 
philosophy "  of  Descartes  is  embraced  with  zeal. 
Following  Hobbes,''  Glanvill  also  states  clearly  the 
positive  view  of  causation^  afterwards  fully  developed  by 
Hume.-^  Yet  he  not  only  vetoed  all  innovation  in 
"divinity,"  but  held  stoutly  by  the  belief  in  witchcraft, 
and  was  its  chief  English  champion  in  his  day  against 
rational  disbelief. ^ 

Apart  from  the  influence  of  Hobbes,  who,  like 
Descartes,  shaped  his  thinking  from  the  starting-point 
of  Galileo,  the  Cartesian  philosophy  played  in  England 
a  great  transitional  part.  At  the  university  of  Cam- 
bridge it  was  already  naturalised  f  and  the  influence  of 
Glanvill,  who  was  an  active  member  of  the  Royal 
Society,  must  have  carried  it  further.  The  remarkable 
treatise  of  the  anatomist  Glisson,^  De  natura  substantice 


'  See  Professor  Robertson  Smith,  The  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1889, 
pref.  p.  vi. 

"  See  the  Humane  Nature  (1640),  ch.  iv,  §§  7-9, 
3  Scepsis  Scientifica ,  ch.  xxiii,  §  i. 

*  See  the  passages  compared  by  Lewes,  History  of  Philosophy, 
4th  ed.  ii,  338. 

5  In  his  Bloiv  at  Modern  Sadducism  (4th  ed.  1668),  Saddiicisi/ius 
Trimnphatus  (1681  ;  3rd  ed.  1689),  and  A  Whip  to  the  Droll,  Fidler  to  the 
Atheist  (166S — a  letter  to  Henry  More,  who  was  zealous  on  the  same 
lines).  These  works  seem  to  have  been  much  more  widely  circulated 
than  the  Scepsis  Scientifca. 

*  Owen,  pref.  to  ed.  of  Scepsis  Scientifca,  p.  ix. 

'  Of  whom,  however,  a  hig'h  medical  authority  declares  that  "as  a 
physiologist  he  was  sunk  in  realism"  (that  is,  metaphysical  apriorism). 
Professor  T.  Clifford  Allbutt,  Harveian  Oration  on  Science  and  Medieval 
Thought,  1901,  p.  44. 

VOL.    II  I 


114        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY 

energetica  (1672),  suggests  the  influence  of  either 
Descartes  or  Gassendi  ;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  the 
clerical  moralist  Cumberland,  writing  his  Disquisitio  de 
legibus  NaturcE  (1672)  in  reply  to  Hobbes,  not  only- 
takes  up  a  utilitarian  position  akin  to  Hobbes's  own, 
and  expressly  avoids  any  appeal  to  the  theological 
doctrine  of  future  punishments,  but  introduces  physiology 
into  his  ethic  to  the  extent  of  partially  figuring  as  an 
ethical  materialist.'  In  regard  to  Gassendi's  direct 
influence  it  has  to  be  noted  that  in  1659  there  appeared 
The  Vanity  of  Judiciary  Astrology^  translated  by  "  A 
Person  of  Quality,"  from  P.  Gassendus  ;  and  further 
that,  as  is  remarked  by  Reid,  Locke  borrowed  more 
from  Gassendi  than  from  any  other  writer.^ 

It  is  stated  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  {English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  2nd  ed.  i,  32)  that  in  England  the  philo- 
sophy of  Descartes  made  no  distinguished  disciples  ;  and  that 
John  Norris  "  seems  to  be  the  only  exception  to  the  general 
indifference."  This  overlooks  (1)  Glanvill,  who  constantly  cites 
and  applauds  Descartes  {Scepsis  Scientifica,  Owen's  ed.  pp.  20, 
28,  30,  38,  43,  46,  64,  70,  etc.).  (2)  In  Henry  More's  Divine 
Dialogues,  again  (1668),  one  of  the  disputants  is  made  to  speak 
{Dial,  i,  ch.  24)  of  "that  admired  wit  Descartes."  More  had 
been  one  of  the  admirers  in  his  youth,  but  changed  his  view  ; 
and  his  Enchiridion  Metaphysicuni  (1671)  is  an  attack  on  the 
Cartesian  system  as  tending  to  atheism.  (3)  The  continual 
objections  to  Descartes  on  the  same  score  throughout  Cud- 
worth's  True  Intellectual  System,  further,  imply  anything  but 
"general  indifference";  and  (4)  Barrow's  tone  in  venturing  to 
oppose  him  (cit.  in  VVhewell's  Philosophy  of  Discovery,  i860, 
p.  179)  pays  tribute  to  his  great  influence.  (5)  Maxwell,  in  a 
note  to  his  translation  (1727)  of  Bishop  Cumberland's 
Disquisitio  de  legibus  Nature^,  remarks  that  the  doctrine  of  a 
universal  ^/t'/«</«  was  accepted  from  the  Cartesian  philosophy 
by  Cumberland,  "  in  whose  time  that  philosophy  prevailed 
much"  (p.  120).  See  again  (6)  Clarke's  Answer  to  Butler's 
Fifth  Letter  (1718)  as  to  the  "universal  prevalence"  of 
Descartes's  notions  in  natural  philosophy.  (7)  The  Scottish 
Lord  President  Forbes  (d.  1747)  summed  up  that  "  Descartes's 

'  Cp.  Whewell,  as  last  cited,  pp.  75-83  ;  Hallam,  Literature  of  Europe, 

iv,  I59-I7I- 

-  Reid,  Intellectual  Powers,  Essay  I,  ch.  i  ;  Hamilton's  ed.  of  \\  orks, 

p.  226. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY        1 15 

romance  kept  entire  possession  of  men's  belief  for  full  fifty 
years"  {Works,  ii,  132).  (8)  And  his  fellow-judge,  Sir  William 
Anstruther,  in  his  "Discourse  against  Atiieism  "  {Essays, 
Moral  and  Divine,  1701,  pp.  6,  8,  9),  cites  with  much  approval 
thetheistic  argument  of  "  the  celebrated  Descartes  "as  "the  last 
evidences  which  appeared  upon  the  stage  of  learning  "  in  that 
connection. 

Cp.  Berkeley,  Siris,  §  331.     Of  Berkeley  himself,   Professor 
Adamson  writes  {Encyc.    Brit,   iii,    589)  that   "  Descartes  and 

Locke are  his  real  masters  in  speculation."     The  Cartesian 

view  of  the  eternity  and  infinity  of  matter  had  further  become 
an  accepted  ground  for  "philosophical  atheists"  in  England 
before  the  end  of  the  century  (Molyneux,  in  Familiar  Letters  of 
Locke  and  his  Friends,  1708,  p.  46).  As  to  the  many  writers 
who  charged  Descartes  with  promoting  atheism,  see  Mosheim's 
notes  in  Harrison's  ed.  of  Cudworth's  Lntellectual  System,  \, 
276-6  ;  and  Leibnitz's  letter  to  Philipp,  cited  by  Latta,  Leibnis, 
1898,  p.  8,  note. 

Sir  Leslie  Stephen  seems  to  have  followed,  under  a  mis- 
apprehension, Whewell,  who  contends  merely  that  he 
Cartesian  doctrine  of  vortices  was  never  widely  accepted 
in  England  {Philosophy  of  Discovery,  pp.  177-8  ;  cp.  Hist,  of 
the  Inductive  Sciences,  ed.  1857,  ii,  107,  147-8).  Buckle  was 
perhaps  similarly  misled  when  he  wrote  in  his  note-book  : 
"Descartes  was  never  popular  in  England"  {Misc.  IVorks, 
abridged  ed.  i,  269).  Whewell  himself  mentions  that  Clarke, 
soon  after  taking  his  degree  at  Cambridge,  "was  actively 
engaged  in  introducing  into  the  academic  course  of  study,  first, 
the  philosophy  of  Descartes  in  its  best  form,  and,  next,  the 
philosophy  of  Newton  "  {Lectures  on  Moral  Philosophy , 
ed.  1862,  pp.  97-98).  And  Professor  Fowler,  in  correcting  his 
first  remarks  on  the  point,  decides  that  "  manj^  of  the  mathe- 
matical teachers  at  Cambridge  continued  to  teach  the  Cartesian 
system  for  some  time  after  the  publication  of  Newton's 
Principia  "  (ed.  oi  Novum  Organum,  1878,  p.  xi). 

At  the  same  time  there  was  growing  up  not  a  little 
Socinian  and  other  Unitarianism,  for  some  variety  of 
which  we  have  seen  two  men  burned  in  161 2.  Cliurch 
measures  had  been  taken  against  the  importation  of 
Socinian  books  as  early  as  1640.  The  famous  Lord 
Falkland,  slain  in  the  Civil  War,  is  supposed  to  have 
leant  to  that  opinion  ;'  and  Chillingworth,  whose  Religion 

'  J.  J.  Tayler,  Retrospect  of  the  Religious  Life  of  Englartd,  Martineau's 
ed.  p.  204  ;  Wallace,  Antitrinitarian  Biography,  iii,  152-3. 


1 1 6        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

of  Protestants  (1637)  was  already  a  remarkable  applica- 
tion of  rational  tests  to  ecclesiastical  questions  in  defiance 
of  patristic  authority,'  seems  in  his  old  age  to  have 
turned  Socinian,^  Violent  attacks  on  the  Trinity  are 
noted  among  the  heresies  of  1646.3  Colonel  John 
Fry,  one  of  the  regicides,  who  in  Parliament  was  accused 
of  rejecting  the  Trinity,  cleared  himself  by  explaining 
that  he  simply  objected  to  the  terms  "  persons  "  and 
"  subsistence,"  but  was  one  of  those  who  sought  to  help 
the  persecuted  Unitarian-  Biddle.  In  1652  the  Parlia- 
ment ordered  the  destruction  of  a  certain  Socinian 
Catechism  ;  and  by  1655  the  heresy  seems  to  have 
become  common. ^  It  is  now  certain  that  Milton  was 
substantially  a  Unitarian, s  and  that  Locke  and  Newton 
were  at  heart  no  less  so.'' 

Indeed,  the  theism  of  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding  undermined  even  his  Unitarian  Scrip- 
turalism,  inasmuch  as  it  denies,  albeit  confusedly,  that 
revelation  can  ever  override  reason.  This  compromise 
appears  to  be  borrowed  from  Spinoza,  who  had  put  it 
with  similar  vagueness  in  his  great  Tractatus^'^  of  which 
pre-eminent  work  Locke  cannot  have  been  ignorant, 
though  he  protested  himself  little  read  in  the  works  of 
Hobbes  and  Spinoza,  "those  justly  decried  names. "^ 
The  Tractatiis  being  translated  into  English  in  the  same 
year  with  the  publication  of  the  Essay,  its  influence 
would  concur  with  Locke's  in  a  widened  circle  of  readers; 
and  the  substantially  naturalistic  doctrine  of  both  books 
inevitably  promoted  the  deistic  movement.  We  have 
Locke's  own  avowal  that  he  had  many  doubts  as  to  the 
Biblical  narratives  ;5  and  he  never  attempts  to  remove 

'  Cp.  Buckle,  3-V0I.  ed.  ii,  347-351  ;  i-vol.  ed.  pp.  196-9. 

^  Tayler,  Retrospect,  pp.  204-5  !  Wallace,  iii,  154-6. 

3  Gangrana,  Pt.  i,  p.  38. 

*  Tayler,  p.  221.  As  to  Biddle,  the  chief  propag-andist  of  the  sect,  see 
pp.  221-4,  3.nd  Wallace,  Art.  285. 

5  Macaulay,  Essay  on  Milton.  Cp.  Browne's  ed.  (Clarendon  Press) 
of  the  poems  of  Milton,  ii,  30.  ^  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religioti,  ch.  5. 

^   Tractatiis  Theologico-Politiciis,  c.  15. 

^  Third  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Worcester. 

9  Some  Familiar  Letters  between  Mr.  Locke  and  Several  of  his  Friends, 
1708,  pp.  302-4. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY        117 


the  doubts  of  others.  Since,  however,  his  doctrine 
provided  a  sphere  for  revelation  on  the  territory  of 
ignorance,  giving  it  prerogative  where  its  assertions 
were  outside  knowledge,  it  counted  substantially  for 
Unitarianism  in  so  far  as  it  did  not  lead  to  deism. 

See  the  Essay,  B.  iv,  c.  18.  Locke's  treatment  of  revelation 
may  be  said  to  be  the  last  and  most  attenuated  form  of  the 
doctrine  of  "  two-fold  truth."  On  his  principle,  any  proposition 
in  a  professed  revelation  that  was  not  provable  or  disprovable 
by  reason  and  knowledge  must  pass  as  true.  His  final  position, 
that  "  whatever /i-  divine  revelation  ought  to  overrule  «//  our 
opinions"  (B.  iv,  c.  18,  §  10),  is  tolerably  elastic,  inasmuch  as 
he  really  reserves  the  question  of  the  actuality  of  revelation. 
Thus  he  evades  the  central  issue.  Naturally  he  was  by  critical 
foreigners  classed  as  a  deist.  Cp.  Gostwick,  German  Culture 
and  Christianity,  1882,  p.  36.  The  German  historian  Tenne- 
mann  sums  up  that  Clarke  wrote  his  apologetic  works  because 
"the  consequences  of  the  empiricism  of  Locke  had  become 
so  decidedly  favourable  to  the  cause  of  atheism,  skepticism, 
materialism,  and  irreligion "  {Manual  of  the  Hist,  of  Philos. 
Eng.  trans.  Bohn  ed.  §  349). 

In  his  "  practical  "  treatise  On  the  Reasonableness  of 
Cliristianity  (1695)  Locke  played  a  similar  part.  It  was 
inspired  by  the  genuine  concern  for  social  peace  which 
had  moved  him  to  write  an  essay  on  Toleration  as  early 
as  1667,'  and  to  produce  from  1685  onwards  his  famous 
Letters  on  Toleration^  by  far  the  most  persuasive  appeal 
of  the  kind  that  had  yet  been  produced  ;^  all  the  more 
successful  so  far  as  it  went,  doubtless,  because  the  first 
Letter  ended  with  a  memorable  capitulation  to  bigotry  : 
"Lastly,  those  are  not  at  all  to  be  tolerated  who  deny 
the  being  of  God.  Promises,  covenants,  and  oaths, 
which  are  the  bonds  of  human  society,  can  have  no  hold 
upon  an  atheist.  The  taking  away  of  God,  though 
but  even  in  thought,  dissolves  all.  Besides,  also,  those 
that  by  their  atheism  undermine  and  destroy  all  religion 
can  have  no  pretence  of  religion  ■whereupon  to  challenge  the 
privilege  of  a  toleration.^''     This  handsome  endorsement 

'  Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  1876,  ii,  34. 

*  The  first  Letter,  written  while  he  was  hiding;  in  Holland  in  1685,  was 
in  Latin,  but  was  translated  into  French,  Dutch,  and  Eng-lish. 


ii8        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

of  the  religion  which  had  repeatedly  "dissolved  all" 
in  a  pandemonium  of  internecine  hate,  as  compared 
with  the  one  heresy  which  had  never  broken  treaties  or 
shed  blood,  is  presumably  more  of  a  prudent  surrender 
to  normal  fanaticism  than  an  expression  of  the  philo- 
sopher's own  state  of  mind  ;'  and  his  treatise  on  The 
Reasonableness  of  Christianity  is  an  attempt  to  limit 
religion  to  a  humane  ethic,  with  sacraments  and 
mysteries  reduced  to  ceremonies,  while  claiming  that 
the  gospel  ethic  was  "  now  with  divine  authority 
established  into  a  legible  law,  far  surpassing  all  that 
philosophy  and  human  reason  had  attained  to."-  Its 
effect  was,  however,  to  promote  rationalism  without 
doing  much  to  mitigate  the  fanaticism  of  belief, 

Locke's  practical  position  has  been  fairly  summed  up  by 
Professor  Bain  :  "  Locke  proposed,  in  his  Reasonableness  of 
Christianity,  to  ascertain  the  exact  meaning  of  Christianity,  by 
casting  aside  all  the  glosses  of  commentators  and  divines,  and 
applying  his  own  unassisted  judgment  to  spell  out  its  teachings. 

The  fallacy  of  his  position  obviously  was  that   he  could  not 

strip   himself  of  his    education    and   acquired    notions He 

seemed  unconscious  of  the  necessity  of  trying  to  make  allowance 
for  his  unavoidable  prepossessions.  In  consequence,  he  simply 
fell  into  an  old  grove  of  received  doctrines  ;  and  these  he 
handled  under  the  set  purpose  of  simplifying  the  fundamentals 
of  Christianity  to  the  utmost.  Such  purpose  was  not  the  result 
of  his  Bible  study,  but  of  his  wish  to  overcome  the  political 
difficulties  of  the  time.  He  found,  by  keeping  close  to  the 
Gospels  and  making  proper  selections  from  the  Epistles,  that 
the  belief  in  Christ  as  the  Messiah  could  be  shown  to  be  the 
central  fact  of  the  Christian  faith  ;  that  the  other  main  doctrines 
followed  out  of  this  by  a  process  of  reasoning  ;  and  that,  as  all 
minds  might  not  perform  the  process  alike,  these  doctrines 
could  not  be  essential  to  the  practice  of  Christianity.  He  got 
out  of  the  difficulty  of  framing  a  creed,  as  many  others  have 
done,  by  simply  using  Scripture  language,  without  subjecting 

'  Mr.  Fox  Bourne,  in  his  biograph)^  (ii,  41),  apologises  for  the  lapse, 
so  alien  to  his  own  ideals,  by  the  remark  that  "  the  atheism  then  in 
vogfue  was  of  a  very  violent  and  rampant  sort."  It  is  to  be  feared  that 
this  palliation  will  not  hold  good — at  least,  the  present  writer  has  been 
unable  to  trace  the  atheism  in  question.  For  "atheism  "  we  had  better 
read  "  religion." 

^  Second  Vindication  of  '■'■  The  Reasonableness  of  Christianity,^'  1697,  pref. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  lyth  CENTURY        119 


it  to  any  very  strict  definition  ;  certainly  without  the  operation 
of  stripping  the  meaning  oi  its  words,  to  see  what  it  amounted 
to.  That  his  short  and  easy  method  was  not  very  successful 
the  history  of  the  deistical  controversy  sufficiently  proves  " 
{Practical  Essays,  1884,  pp.  226-7). 

That  Locke  was  felt  to  have  injured  orthodoxy  is 
further  proved  by  the  many  attacks  made  on  him  from 
the  orthodox  side.  Even  the  first  Letter  on  Toleration 
elicited  retorts,  one  of  which  claims  to  demonstrate  "the 
Absurdity  and  Impiety  of  an  Absolute  Toleration."' 
On  his  positive  teachings  he  was  assailed  by  Bishop 
Stillingfleet ;  by  the  Rev.  John  Milner,  B.D.;  by  the 
Rev.  John  Morris  ;  by  William  Carrol  ;  and  by  the  Rev. 
John  Edwards,  B.D.;  his  only  assailant  with  a  rational- 
istic repute  being  Dr.  Thomas  Burnet.  Some  attacked 
him  on  his  Essays;  some  on  his  Reasonableness  of 
Christianity ;  orthodoxy  finding  in  both  the  same 
tendency  to  *'  subvert  the  nature  and  use  of  divine 
revelation  and  faith."-  In  the  opinion  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Bolde,  who  defended  him  in  Some  Considerations 
published  in  1699,  the  hostile  clericals  had  treated  him 
"  with  a  rudeness  peculiar  to  some  who  make  a  profession 
of  the  Christian  religion,  and  seem  to  pride  themselves 
in  being  the  clergy  of  the  Church  of  England. "^  This 
is  especially  true  of  Edwards,  a  notably  ignoble  type  ; 
but  hardly  of  Milner,  whose  later  Account  of  Mr.  Lock's 
Religion  out  of  his  Oimi  Writings,  and  in  his  Owti  Words 
(1700),  pressed  him  shrewdly  on  the  score  of  his 
"Socinianism."  In  the  eyes  of  a  pietist  like  William 
Law,  again,  Locke's  conception  of  the  infant  mind  as  a 
tabula  rasa  was  "  dangerous  to  religion,"  besides  being 
philosophically  false."*  Yet  Locke  agreed  with  Law^ 
that  moral  obligation  is  dependent  solely  on  the  will  of 

'  Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  ii,  181, 

^  Said  by  Carrol,  Disserfafioii  on  Mr.  Lock's  Essay,  1706,  cited  by 
Anthony  Collins,  Essay  Concerning  the  Use  of  Reason,  1709,  p.  30. 

3  Cited  by  Fox  Bourne,  Life  of  Locke,  ii,  438. 

■•  Confutation  of  Warburton  (1757)  in  Extracts  from  Laiv's  Works, 
1768,  i,  208-9. 

5  Cp.  the  Essay,  B.  I,  ch.  iii,  §  6,  with  Law's  Case  of  Reason,  in 
Extracts,  as  cited,  p.  36. 


120        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

God — a  doctrine  denounced  by  Shaftesbury  from  a  deistic 
standpoint  as  the  negation  of  morality. 

See  the  Inquiry  Concerning-  Virhie  or  Merit,  Pt.  iii,  §  2  ; 
and  the  Letters  to  a  Student,  under  date  June  3rd,  1709  (p.  403 
in  Rand's  Life,  I^etters,  etc.,  of  Shafteslniry ,  igoo).  The  extra- 
ordinary letter  of  Newton  to  Locke,  written  just  after  or  during 
a  spell  of  insanity,  first  apologises  for  having  believed  that 
Locke  "  endeavoured  to  embroil  nie  with  women  and  by  other 
means,"  and  goes  on  to  beg  pardon  "  for  representing  that  you 
struck  at  the  root  of  morality,  in  a  principle  you  laid  down  in 
your  book  of  ideas."  In  his  subsequent  letter,  I'eplying  to  that 
of  Locke  granting  forgiveness  and  gently  asking  for  details,  he 
writes  :  "What  I  said  of  your  book  I  remember  not."  (Letters 
of  September  i6th  and  October  5th,  1693,  given  in  Fox  Bourne's 
Life  of  Locke,  ii,  226-7,  ^"d  Sir  D.  Brewster's  Memoirs  of  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  1855,  ii,  148- 151.)  Newton,  who  had  been  on 
very  friendly  terms  with  Locke,  must  have  been  repeating, 
when  his  mind  was  disordered,  criticisms  otherwise  current. 
After  printing  in  full  the  letters  above  cited,  Brewster  insists,  on 
his  principle  of  sacrificing  all  other  considerations  to  Newton's 
glory  (cp.  De  Morgan,  Newton:  his  Friend:  and  his  N^iece, 
1885,  pp.  99-1 11),  that  all  the  while  Newton  was  "in  the  full 
possession  of  his  mental  powers."  The  whole  diction  of  the 
first  letter  tells  the  contrary.  If  we  are  not  to  suppose  that 
Newton  had  been  temporarilv  insane,  we  must  think  of  his 
judgment  as  even  less  rational,  apart  from  ph3'sics,  than  it  is 
seen  to  be  in  his  dissertations  on  prophecy.  Certainly  Newton 
was  at  all  times  apt  to  be  suspicious  of  his  friends  to  the  point 
of  moral  disease  (see  his  attack  on  Montague,  in  his  letter  to 
Locke  of  January  26th,  1691-92  :  in  Fox  Bourne,  ii,  218  ;  and 
cp.  De  Morgan,  as  cited,  p.  146)  ;  but  the  letter  to  Locke  indi- 
cates a  point  at  which  the  normal  malady  had  upset  the  mental 
balance.  It  remains,  nevertheless,  evidence  as  to  bitter 
orthodox  criticism  of  Locke. 

On  the  whole,  it  is  clear,  the  effect  of  his  work, 
especially  of  his  naturalistic  psychology,  was  to  make 
for  rationalism  ;  and  his  compromises  furthered  instead 
of  checking  the  movement  of  unbelief.  His  ideal  of 
practical  and  undogmatic  Christianity,  indeed,  was 
hardly  distinguishable  from  that  of  Hobbes,'  and,  as 
previously  set  forth  by  the  Rev.  Arthur  Bury  in  his 
Naked  Gospel  (1690),  was  so  repugnant  to  the  church 

'  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  p.  122. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijlh  CENTURY        121 

that  that  book  was  burned  at  Oxford  as  heretical.' 
Locke's  position  as  a  believing-  Christian  was  indeed 
extremely  weak,  and  could  easily  have  been  demolished 
by  a  competent  deist,  such  as  Collins,^  or  a  skeptical 
dogmatist  who  could  control  his  temper  and  avoid  the 
gross  misrepresentation  so  often  resorted  to  by  Locke's 
orthodox  enemies.  But  by  the  deists  he  was  valued  as 
an  auxiliary,  and  by  many  latitudinarian  Christians  as 
a  helper  towards  a  rationalistic  if  not  a  logical  com- 
promise. 

Rationalism  of  one  or  the  other  tint,  in  fact,  seems  to 
have  spread  in  all  directions.  The  accomplished  and 
influential  George  Savile,  Marquis  of  Halifax,  often 
spoken  of  as  a  deist,  and  even  as  an  atheist,  by  his 
contem.poraries,3  appears  clearly  from  his  own  writings 
to  have  been  either  that  or  a  Unitarian.-*  That  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  was  "some  kind  of  Unitarian  "^  is  proved  by 
documents  long  withheld  from  publication,  and  dis- 
closed only  in  the  second  edition  of  Sir  David  Brewster's 
Memoirs.  There  is  indeed  no  question  that  he 
remained  a  mere  scripturalist,  handling  the  texts  as 
such,^  and  wasting  much  time  in  vain  interpretations  of 
Daniel  and  the  Apocalypse. ^  Temperamentally,  also, 
he  was  averse  to  anything  like  bold  discussion,  declaring 
that  "  those  at  Cambridge  ought  not  to  judge  and  censure 
their  superiors,  but  to  obey  and  honour  them,  according 
to  the  law  and  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience  "^ — this 
after  he  had  sat  on  the  Convention  which  deposed 
James  IL     In  no  aspect,  indeed,  apart  from  his  supreme 


'   Fox  Bourne,  ii,  404-5. 

-  An  ostensibly  orthodox  Professor  of"  our  own  day  has  written  that 
Locke's  doctrine  as  to  religion  and  ethics  "  shows  at  once  the  sincerity 
of  his  relig'ious  convictions  and  the  inadequate  conception  he  had  formed 
to  himself  of  the  grounds  and  nature  of  moral  philosophy"  (Fowler, 
Locke,  1880,  p.  76). 

3  Cp.  Macaulay,  History,  ch.  ii.      Student's  ed.  i,  120. 

*  Compare  his  Advice  to  a  Daughter,  §  i  (in  Miscellanies,  1700),  and 
his  Political  Thoughts  and  Reflectio7is  :  Religion. 

5  De  Morgan,  as  cited,  p.  107. 

6  See  Brewster,  ii,  31S,  321-2,  323,  331  sq.,  342  sq. 
^  Id.  p.  327  sq. 

s  Id.  p.   115. 


122        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

scientific  genius,  does  he  appear  as  morally'  or  intel- 
lectually pre-eminent.  There  is  therefore  more  than 
usual  absurdity  in  the  proclamation  of  his  pious 
biographer  that  "  the  apostle  of  infidelity  cowers  beneath 
the  implied  rebuke"-  of  his  orthodoxy.  The  very 
anxiety  shown  by  Newton  and  his  friends^  to  checkmate 
"  the  infidels  "  is  a  proof  that  his  religious  work  was  not 
scientific  even  in  inception,  but  the  expression  of  his 
neurotic  side  ;  and  the  attempt  of  some  of  his  scientific 
admirers  to  show  that  his  religious  researches  belong 
solely  to  the  years  of  his  decline  is  a  corresponding 
oversight.  Newton  was  always  pathologically  pre- 
possessed on  the  side  of  his  religion,  and  subordinated 
his  science  to  his  theology  even  in  the  Pnncipia.  It  is 
therefore  all  the  more  significant  of  the  set  of  opinion  in 
his  day  that,  tied  as  he  was  to  Scriptural  interpretations, 
he  drew  away  from  orthodox  dogma  as  to  the  Trinity. 
Not  only  does  he  show  himself  a  destructive  critic  of 
Trinitarian  texts  and  an  opponent  of  Athanasius'':  he 
expressly  formulates  the  propositions  (i)  that  "there  is 

one  God  the  Father and  one  mediator  between  God 

and  man,  the  man  Christ  Jesus";  (2)  that  "the  Father  is 
the  invisible  God  whom  no  eye  hath  seen  or  can  see. 
All  other  beings  are  sometimes  visible";  and  (3)  that 
"  the  Father  liatli  life  in  himself,  and  hath  given  the 
Son  to  have  life  in  himself."^  Such  opinions,  of  course, 
could  not  be  published  :  under  the  Act  of  1697  they 
would  have  made  Newton  liable  to  loss  of  office  and  all 
civil  rights.  In  his  own  day,  therefore,  his  opinions 
were  rather  gossipped-of  than  known  ;*"  but  in  so  far  as 
his  heresy  was  realised,  it  must  have  wrought  much 
more  for  unbelief  than  could  be  achieved  for  orthodoxy 
by  his  surprisingly  commonplace  strictures  on  atheism, 
which  show  the  ordinary  inability  to  see  what  atheism 
means. 


'  Cp.  De  Morg-an,  pp.  133-145.  ^  Brewster,  ii,  314. 

3  Id.  pp.  315-316.  ^  Id.  pp.  342-6. 

5  Id.  p.  -^49.      See  the  remaining'  articles,  and  App.  XXX,  p.  1532. 
">  Id.  p.  388. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY        123 

The  arg'umenl  of  his  Short  Scheme  of  True  Religioii  brackets 
atheism  with  idolatry,  and  .u'oes  on  :  "  Atheism  is  so  senseless 
and  odious  to  mankind  that  it  never  had  many  professors. 
Can  it  be  by  accident  that  all  birds,  beasts,  and  men  have  their 
rig-ht  side  and  left  side  alike  shaped  (except  in  their  bowels), 
and  just  two  eyes,  and  no  more,  on  either  side  of  the  face?"  etc. 
(Brewster,  ii,  347).  The  logical  implication  is  that  a  monstrous 
organism,  with  the  sides  unlike,  represents  "accident,"  and 
that  in  that  case  there  has  either  been  no  causation  or  no 
"purpose"  by  Omnipotence.  It  is  only  fair  to  remember 
that  no  avowedly  "atheistic  "  argument  could  in  Newton's  day 
find  publication  ;  but  his  remarks  are  those  of  a  man  who  had 
never  contemplated  philosophically  the  negation  of  his  own 
religious  sentiment  at  the  point  in  question.  Brewster,  whose 
judgment  and  good  faith  are  alike  precarious,  writes  that 
"When  Voltaire  asserted  that  Sir  Isaac  explained  the 
prophecies  in  the  same  manner  as  those  who  went  before  him, 
he  only  exhibited  his  ignorance  of  what  Newton  wrote,  and 
what  others  had  written  "  (ii,  331,  note ;  355).  The  writer  did 
not  understand  what  he  censured.  Voltaire  meant  that 
Newton's  treatment  of  prophecy  is  on  the  same  plane  of 
unscientific  credulity  as  that  of  his  orthodox  predecessors. 

Other  distinguished  men  of  the  period  were  more 
overt  in  their  dissent  from  orthodoxy.  Wilham  Penn, 
the  Quaker,  held  a  Unitarian  attitude  ;'  and  in  the 
Church  itself  sad  confusion  arose  on  the  attempt  being 
made  to  define  the  orthodox  view"  in  opposition  to  a 
widely-circulated  anti-Trinitarian  treatise. ^  Archbishop 
Tillotson  (d.  1694)  w-as  often  accused  of  Socinianism  ; 
and  in  the  next  generation  was  smilingly  spoken  of  by 
Anthony  Collins  as  a  leading  Freethinker.  Positive 
Unitarianism  all  the  while  was  being  pushed  by  a 
number  of  tracts  which  escaped  prosecution,  being 
prudently  handled  by  Locke's  friend,  Thomas  Firmin  ;^ 
and  the  heresy  must  have  been  encouraged  even  within 
the  Church  by  the  scandal  which  broke  out  when  Dean 
Sherlock's  Vindication  of  the  Trinity  (1693)  was  attacked 

'  Tayler,  Retrospect,  p.  226;  Wallace,  Antitrin.  Biog.  i,  160-9. 
-  Tayler,  p.  227;  Dynamics,  pp.  113-115. 

3  This  was  by  William   Freeke,  who  was  prosecuted  and  fined  £}f>o. 
The  book  was  burnt  by  the  hang-man  (1693).      Wallace,  Art.  354. 
•»  Fox  Bourne,  ii,  405  ;  Wallace,  Art.  353. 


124        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  17th  CENTURY 

by  Dean  South'  as  the  work  of  a  Tritheist.  The  plea  of 
Dr.  Wallis,  Locke's  old  teacher,  that  a  doctrine  of  "three 
somewhats" — he  objected  to  the  term  "persons" — in  one 
God  was  as  reasonable  as  the  concept  of  three  dimen- 
sions,'' was  of  course  only  a  heresy  the  more.  The  fray 
waxed  so  furious,  and  the  discredit  cast  on  orthodoxy 
was  so  serious. 3  that  in  the  year  1700  an  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment was  passed  forbidding  the  publication  of  any  more 
works  on  the  subject. 

Meanwhile  the  so-called  Latitudinarians,^all  the  while 
aiming  as  they  did  at  a  non-dogmatic  Christianity, 
served  as  a  connecting  medium  for  the  different  forms  of 
liberal  thought ;  and  a  new  element  of  critical  disin- 
tegration was  introduced  by  a  speculative  treatment  of 
Genesis  in  the  Archceologia  (1692)  of  Dr.  T.  Burnet,  a 
professedly  orthodox  scholar,  who  nevertheless  treated 
the  Creation  story  as  an  allegory,  and  threw  doubt  on 
the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch.  His  ideas  were 
partly  popularised  through  Blount's  Oracles  of  Reason. 
Much  more  remarkable,  but  outside  of  popular  discussion, 
were  the  Evangelium  medici  (1697)  of  Dr.  B.  Connor, 
wherein  the  Gospel  miracles  were  explained  away,  on 
lines  later  associated  with  German  rationalism,  as 
natural  phenomena;  and  the  curious  treatise  of  Newton's 
friend,  John  Craig, ^  TJicologice  christiancE  principia 
mathematica  (1699),  wherein  it  is  argued  that  all 
evidence  grows  progressively  less  valid  in  course  of 
time  f  and  that  accordingly  the  Christian  religion  will 

'  "  Locke's  ribald  schoolfellow  of  nearly  fifty  years  ago"  (Fox  Bourne, 
last  cit.). 

=  Id.  ib. 

3  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion^  pp.  113-115. 

*•  As  to  whom  see  Tayler,  Retrospect,  ch.  v,  §  4.  They  are  spoken  of 
as  "the  new  sect  of  Latitude-Men"  in  1662  ;  and  in  1708  are  said  to  be 
•'  at  this  day  Low  Churchmen."  See  A  Brief  Account  of  the  Ne".v  Sect  of 
Latitude-Men  by  "  S.  P."  of  Cambridge,  1662,  reprinted  in  The  Phcenix, 
vol.  ii,  170S,  and  pref.  to  that  vol.  From  S.  P. 's  account  it  is  clear  that 
they  connected  with  the  new  scientific  movment,  and  leant  to  Car- 
tesianism.  As  above  noted,  they  included  such  prelates  as  Wilkins  and 
Tillotson. 

5  See  Brewster's  Memoirs  of  Neivton,  1855,  i',  315-316,  for  a  letter 
indicating  his  religious  attitude. 

°  See  the  note  of  Pope  and  Warburton  on  the  Dunciad,  iv,  462. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  ijth  CENTURY        125 

cease  to  be  believed  about  the  year  3144,  when  probably 
will  occur  the  Second  Coming.  Connor,  when  attacked, 
protested  his  orthodoxy;  Craig  held  successively  two 
prebends  of  the  Church  of  England  ;'  and  both  lived 
and  died  unmolested,  probably  because  they  had  the 
prudence  to  write  in  Latin.  About  this  time,  further, 
the  title  of"  Rationalist"  made  some  fresh  headway  as 
a  designation,  not  of  unbelievers,  but  of  believers  who 
sought  to  ground  themselves  on  reason.  Such  books  as 
those  of  Clifford  and  Boyle  tell  of  much  discussion  as  to 
the  efficacy  of  "  reason  "  in  religious  things,  and  in  1686 
there  appears  A  Rational  Catechism,''  a  substantially 
deistic  or  Unitarian  production,  notable  for  its  aloofness 
from  evangelical  feeling,  despite  its  many  references  to 
Biblical  texts  in  support  of  its  propositions.  In  the 
Essays  Moral  and  Divine  of  the  Scotch  judge,  Sir 
William  Anstruther,  published  in  1701,  there  is  a 
reference  to  "those  who  arrogantly  term  themselves 
Rationalists  "mu  the  sense  of  claiming  to  find  Chris- 
tianity not  only,  as  Locke  put  it,  a  reasonable  religion, 
but  one  making  no  strain  upon  faith.  Already  the  term 
had  become  potentially  one  of  vituperation,  and  it  is 
applied  by  the  learned  judge  to  "the  wicked  reprehended 
by  the  Psalmist.  "-^  Forty  years  later,  however,  it  was 
still  applied  rather  to  the  Christian  who  claimed  to 
believe  upon  rational  grounds  than  to  the  deist  or 
unbeliever.5 


'  See  arts,  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 

^  Reprinted  at  Amsterdam,  171 2. 

3  Essays  as  cited,  p.  84. 

■*  Id.  p.  30. 

s  See  Christianity  not  Founded  on  Argument  (by  Henry  Dodwell,  jr.), 
1741,  pp.  11,34.  Waterland,  as  cited  by  Bishop  Hurst,  treats  the  terms 
Reasonist  and  Rationalist  as  labels  or  nicknames  of  those  who  untruly 
profess  to  reason  more  scrupulously  than  other  people.  The  former 
term  may,  however,  have  been  set  up  as  a  result  of  Le  Clerc's  rendering 
of  "  the  Logos,"  in  John  i,  i,  by  "  Reason  " — an  argument  to  which  Water- 
land  repeatedly  refers. 


Chapter  XV. 

BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

-§   I- 

It  appears  from  the  last  chapter  that  the  "  deistic 
movement,"  commonly  assigned  to  the  eighteenth 
century,  had  been  abundantly  prepared  for  in  the 
seventeenth,  which,  in  turn,  was  but  developing  ideas 
current  in  the  sixteenth.  When,  in  1696,  John  Toland 
published  his  Christianity  Not  Mysterious^  the  sensation 
it  made  was  due  not  so  much  to  any  unheard-of  boldness 
in  its  thought  as  to  the  simple  fact  that  deistic  ideas  had 
thus  found  their  way  into  print.'  So  far  the  deistic 
position  was  represented  in  English  literature  only  by 
the  works  of  Herbert,  Hobbes,  and  Blount  ;  and  of  these 
only  the  first  (who  wrote  in  Latin)  and  the  third  had 
put  the  case  at  any  length.  Against  the  deists  or 
atheists  of  the  school  of  Hobbes,  and  the  Scriptural 
Unitarians  who  thought  with  Newton  and  Locke,  there 
stood  arrayed  the  great  mass  of  orthodox  intolerance 
which  clamoured  for  the  violent  suppression  of  every 
sort  of  "infidelity."  It  was  this  feeling,  of  which  the 
army  of  ignorant  rural  clergy  were  the  spokesmen,  that 
found  vent  in  the  Blasphemy  Act  of  1697.  The  new 
literary  growth  dating  from  the  time  of  Toland  is  the 
evidence  of  the  richness  of  the  rationalistic  soil  already 
created.  Thinking  men  craved  a  new  atmosphere. 
Locke's  Reasonableness  of  Christianity  is  an  unsuccess- 
ful compromise :  Toland's  book  begins  a  new  propa- 
gandist era. 

'  As  Voltaire  noted,  Toland  was  persecuted  in  Ireland  for  his  circum- 
spect and  cautious  first  book,  and  left  unmolested  in  England  when  he 
grew  much  more  aggressive. 

126 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        127 

Toland's  treatise,'  heretical  as  it  was,  professedly 
founded  on  Locke's  anonymous  Reasonableness  of 
Christianiiy,  its  young  author  being"  on  terms  of 
acquaintance  with  the  philosopher.-  Toland,  however, 
lacked  alike  the  timidity  and  the  prudence  which  so 
safely  guided  Locke  in  his  latter  years  ;  and  though  his 
argument  was  only  a  logical  and  outspoken  extension  of 
Locke's  position,  to  the  end  of  showing  that  there  was 
nothing  supernatural  in  Christianity  of  Locke's  type,  it 
separated  him  from  "  respectable  "  society  in  England 
and  Ireland  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  The  book  was 
"  presented "  by  the  Grand  Juries  of  Middlesex  and 
Dublin  ;-^  the  dissenters  in  Dublin  being  chiefly  active 
in  denouncing  it — with  or  without  knowledge  of  its 
contents  ;^  half-a-dozen  answers  appeared  immediately  ; 
and  when  in  1698  he  produced  another,  entitled  Aniyntor, 
showing  the  infirm  foundation  of  the  Christian  canon, 
there  was  again  a  speedy  crop  of  replies.  Despite  the 
oversights  inevitable  to  such  pioneer  work,  it  opens,  from 
the  side  of  freethought,  the  era  of  documentary  criticism 
of  the  New  Testament  ;  and  in  some  of  his  later 
freethinking  books,  as  the  Nazarenus  (17 18)  and  the 
Pantheisticon  (1720),  he  continues  to  show  himself  in 
advance  of  his  time  in  "opening  new  windows"  for  his 
mind. 5  The  latter  work  represents  in  particular  the 
influence  of  Spinoza,  whom  he  had  formerly  criticised 
somewhat  forcibly*"  for  his  failure  to  recognise  that 
motion  is  inherent  in  matter.  On  that  head  he  lays 
down^  the  doctrine  that  "  motion  is  but  matter  under 
a  certain   consideration" — an    essentially  "materialist" 

'  First  ed.  anonymous.  Second  ed. ,  of  same  year,  gives  author's 
name.     Another  ed.  in  1702. 

-   Cp.  D_ynaiiiics  of  Rcligiouy  p.   129. 

3  As  late  as  1701  a  vote  for  its  prosecution  was  passed  in  the  Lower 
House  of  Convocation.      Farrar,  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought,  p.  iSo. 

•*  Molyneux,  in  Familiar  Letters  of  Locke,  etc.,  p.  228. 

5  No  credit  for  this  is  given  in  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  notice  of  Toland  in 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteentli  Century,  i,  101-112.  Compare  the 
estimate  of  Lange,  Gesch.  des  Materialismus,  i,  272-6  (Eng.  trans,  i, 
324-330).      Lange  perhaps  idealises  his  subject  somewhat. 

*  Li  two  letters  published  along  with  the  Letters  to  Serena,  1704. 

7  Letters  to  Serena,  etc.,  1704,  pref. 


128         BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 


position,  deriving  from  the  pre-Socratic  Greeks,  and 
incidentally  affirmed  by  Bacon.'  He  was  not  exactly 
an  industrious  student  or  writer  ;  but  he  had  scholarly 
knowledge  and  instinct,  and  several  of  his  works  show 
close  study  of  Bayle. 

As  regards  his  more  original  views  on  Christian 
origins,  he  is  not  impressive  to  the  modern  reader  ;  but 
theses  which  to-day  stand  for  little  were  in  their  own 
day  important.  Thus  in  his  Hodegus  (Part  I  of  the 
Tetradymus^  1720)  it  is  -  elaborately  argued  that  the 
"  pillar  of  fire  by  night  and  of  cloud  by  day  "  was  no 
miracle,  but  the  regular  procedure  of  guides  in  deserts, 
where  night  marches  are  the  rule  ;  the  "  cloud  "  being 
simply  the  smoke  of  the  vanguard's  fire.  Later  criticism 
decides  that  the  whole  narrative  of  the  Exodus  is  myth. 
Toland's  method,  however,  was  relatively  so  advanced 
that  it  had  not  been  abandoned  by  theological  "  ration- 
alists "  a  century  later.  Of  that  movement  he  must  be 
ranked  an  energetic  pioneer  ;  though  he  lacked  some- 
what the  strength  of  character  that  in  his  day  was 
peculiarly  needed  to  sustain  a  freethinker.  Much  of  his 
later  life  was  spent  abroad  ;  and  his  Letters  to  Serena 
(1704)  show  him  permitted  to  discourse  to  the  Queen  of 
Prussia  on  such  topics  as  the  origin  and  force  of  prejudice, 
the  history  of  the  doctrine  of  immortality,  and  the  origin 
of  idolatry.  He  pays  his  correspondent  the  compliment 
of  treating  his  topics  with  much  learning ;  and  his 
manner  of  assuming  her  own  orthodoxy  in  regard  to 
revelation  could  have  served  as  a  model  to  Gibbon.^ 
But,  despite  such  distinguished  patronage,  his  life  was 
largely  passed  in  poverty,  cheerfully  endured,^  with  only 
chronic  help  from  well-to-do  sympathisers,  such  as 
Shaftesbury,  who  was  not  over-sympathetic.     When  it 


'  De  Principiis  atqiie  Originibus  (Routledgfe's  t-vol.  ed.  pp.  651,  667). 

-  Work  cited,  pp.  19,  67. 

3  Sir  Henry  Craik  (cited  by  Temple  Scott,  Bohn  ed.  of  Swift's  Works, 
iii,  9)  speaks  of  Toland  as  "a  man  of  utterly  worthless  character." 
This  is  mere  malignant  abuse.  Toland  is  described  by  Pope  in  a  note 
to  the  Dunciad  (ii,  399)  as  a  spy  to  Lord  Oxford.  There  could  hardly 
be  a  worse  authority  for  such  a  charge. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        129 

is  noted  that  down  to  1761  there  had  appeared  no  fewer 
than  fifty-four  answers  to  his  first  book,'  his  importance 
as  an  intellectual  influence  may  be  realised. 

A  certain  amount  of  evasion  was  forced  upon  Toland 
by  the  Blasphemy  Law  of  1697  ;  inferentially,  however, 
he  was  a  thorough  deist  until  he  became  pantheist  ;  and 
the  discussion  over  his  books  showed  that  views  essen- 
tially deistic  were  held  even  among  his  antagonists. 
One,  an  Irish  bishop,  got  into  trouble  by  setting  forth 
a  notion  of  deity  which  squared  with  that  of  Hobbes.^ 
The  whole  of  our  present  subject,  indeed,  is  much  com- 
plicated by  the  distribution  of  heretical  views  among  the 
nominally  orthodox,  and  of  orthodox  views  among 
heretics. 3  Thus  the  school  of  Cudworth,  zealous  against 
atheism,  was  less  truly  theistic  than  that  of  Blount,'*  who, 
following  Hobbes,  pointed  out  that  to  deny  to  God  a 
continual  personal  and  providential  control  of  human 
affairs  was  to  hold  to  atheism  under  the  name  of  theism  ;5 
whereas  Cudworth,  the  champion  of  theism  against  the 
atheists,  entangled  himself  hopelessly*"  in  a  theory  which 
made  deity  endow  Nature  with  "  plastic  "  powers  and 
leave  it  to  its  own  evolution.  The  position  was  serenely 
demolished  by  Bayle,^  as  against  Le  Clerc,  who  sought 
to  defend  it ;  and  in  England  the  clerical  outcry  was  so 
general  that  Cudworth  gave  up  authorship.^  Over  the 
same  crux,  in  Ireland,  Bishop  Browne  and  Bishop 
Berkeley  accused  each  other  of  promoting  atheism  ;  and 
Archbishop  King  was  embroiled  in  the  dispute.'^  On 
the  other  hand,  the  theistic  Descartes  had  laid  down  a 

'  Gostwick,  Geniian  Culture  and  Christianity,  1882,  p.  26. 

-  Cp.  Stephen,  as  cited,  p.  1 15. 

3  "The  Christianity  of  many  writers  consisted  simply  in  expressing 
deist  opinions  in  the  old-fashioned  phraseology"  (Stephen,  i,  91). 

*  Cp.  Piinjer,  Christ.  Philos.  of  Religion,  pp.  289-290  ;  and  Dynamics 
of  Religion,  pp.  94-98.  Mr.  Morley's  reference  to  "the  godless  deism 
of  the  English  school "  (  Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  69)  is  puzzling. 

3  Macaulay's  description  of  Blount  as  an  atheist  is  therefore  doubl}- 
unwarranted. 

"  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religio?i,  pp.  94-98. 

''   Continuation  des  Pe?isbes  Diverses a  I'occasion  de  la  Coniete de 

1O80,  Amsterdam,  1705,  i,  91.  -  „.     .,  ,. 

^  Warburton,  Diinne  Legation,  vol.  ii,  preface. 

5  Stephen,  English  Thought,  \,  11 4- 11 8. 

VOL.  II  K 


I30        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

"mechanical"  theory  of  the  universe  which  perfectly 
comported  with  atheism,  and  partly  promoted  that  way 
of  thinking  ;'  and  a  selection  from  Gassendi's  ethical 
writings,  translated  into  English-  (1699),  wrought  in  the 
same  direction.  The  Church  itself  contained  Cartesians 
and  Cudworthians,  Socinians  and  deists. ^  Each  group, 
further,  had  inner  differences  as  to  free-will+  and  Provi- 
dence ;  and  the  theistic  schools  of  Newton,  Clarke,  and 
Leibnitz  rejected  each  other's  philosophies  as  well  as  that 
of  Descartes.  Leibnitz  complained  grimly  that  Newton 
and  his  followers  had  "  a  very  odd  opinion  concerning 
the  Work  of  God,"  making  the  universe  an  imperfect 
machine,  which  the  deity  had  frequently  to  mend  ;  and 
treating  space  as  an  organ  by  which  God  perceives  things, 
which  are  thus  regarded  as  not  produced  or  maintained 
by  him. 5  Newton's  principles  of  explanation,  he  insisted, 
were  those  of  the  materialists.^  John  Hutchinson,  a 
professor  at  Cambridge,  in  his  Treatise  of  Power, 
Essential  and  Mechanical,  also  bitterly  assailed  Newton 
as  a  deistical  and  anti-scriptural  sophist.''  Clarke,  on 
the  other  hand,  declared  that  the  philosophy  of  Leibnitz 
was  "tending  to  banish  God  from  the  world. "^  Along- 
side of  such  internecine  strife,  it  was  not  surprising  that 
the  great  astronomer  Halley,  who  accepted  Newton's 
principles  in  physics,  was  commonly  reputed  an  atheist; 


'  This,  according-  to  John  Craig-,  was  Newton's  opinion.  "Tlie  reason 
of  his  [Newton's]  showing  the  errors  of  Cartes's  philosophy  was  because 
he  tliouj^ht  it  made  on  purpose  to  be  the  foundation  of  infidehty."  Letter 
to  Conduitt,  April  7th,  1727,  in  Brewster's  Memoirs  of  Neivton,  ii,  315. 
Clarke,  in  his  Answer  to  Butler's  Fifth  Letter,  expresses  a  similar  view. 

^  "  Three  Discourses  0/  Happiness,  Virtue,  and  Liberty,  Collected  from 
the  Works  of  the  Learn'd  Gassendi  by  Monsieur  Bernier.  Translated 
out  of  the  French,  1699." 

3  Cp.  W.  Sichel,  Bolinghroke  and  His  Times,  1901,  i,  175. 

•*  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  (i,  t,T))  makes  the  surprising-  statement  that  a 
"  dog-matic  assertion  of  free-will  became  a  mark  of  the  whole  deist  and 
semi-deist  school."  On  the  contrary,  Hobbes  and  Anthony  Collins, 
not  to  speak  of  Locke,  wrote  with  uncommon  power  against  the  concep- 
tion of  free-will,  and  had  many  disciples  on  that  head. 

s  Letter  to  the  Princess  of  Wales,  November  1715,  in  Brewster,  ii, 
284-5. 

*  Second  Letter  to  Clarke,  par.  i. 

7  Abstract  from  the  Works  of  John  Hutchinson,  1755,  pp.  149-163. 

^  Clarke's  Answer  to  Leibnitz's  First  Letter,  end. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iS/h  CENTURY        131 

and  that  the  freethinkers  pitted  his  name  in  that  connec- 
tion against  Newton's.'  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that 
if  intellectual  England  could  have  been  polled  in  1710, 
under  no  restraints  from  economic,  social,  and  legal 
pressure,  some  form  of  rationalism  inconsistent  with 
Christianity  would  have  been  found  to  be  fully  as 
common  as  orthodoxy.  In  outlying  provinces,  in  Devon 
and  Cornwall,  in  Ulster,  in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  as 
well  as  in  the  metropolis,  the  pressure  of  deism  on  the 
popular  creed  evoked  expressions  of  Arian  and  Socinian 
thought  among  the  clergy.-  It  was,  in  fact,  the  various 
pressures  under  notice  that  determined  the  outward 
fortunes  of  belief  and  unbelief,  and  have  substantially 
determined  them  since.  When  the  devout  Whiston  was 
deposed  from  his  professorship  for  his  Arianism,  and 
the  unbelieving  Saunderson  was  put  in  his  place, ^  and 
when  Simson  was  suspended  from  his  ministerial  func- 
tions in  Glasgow,^  the  lesson  was  learned  that  outward 
conformity  was  the  sufficient  way  to  income. ^ 

Hard  as  it  was,  however,  to  kick  against  the  pricks 
of  law  and  prejudice,  it  is  clear  that  many  in  the  upper 
and  middle  classes  privately  did  so.  The  clerical  and  the 
new  popular  literature  of  the  time  prove  this  abundantly. 
In  the  7rt//6^r  and  its  successors, •"  the  decorous  Addison 

'  Berkeley,  Defence  of  Freethinking  in  Mathematics,  par.  vii  ;  and 
Stock's  iNIemoir  of  Berkeley.      Cp.  Brewster,  Memoirs  of  N^e^vton,  ii,  408. 

-  Lecky,  Hist,  of  Engl,  in  the  Eighteenth  Cent.  ed.  1892,  iii,  22-24. 

3  The  tradition  of  Saunderson's  unbelief  is  constant.  In  the  memoir 
prefixed  to  his  Elements  of  Algebra  (1740)  no  word  is  said  of  his  creed, 
though  at  death  he  received  the  sacrament. 

■*  See  The  State  of  the  Process  depending  Against  Mr.  John  Simson, 
Edinburg'h,  1728.  Simson  always  expressed  himself  piously,  but  had 
thrown  out  such  expressions  as  Ratio  est  principiiim  et  fundamentiim 
theologice,  which  "contravened  the  Act  of  Assembly,  1717"  (vol.  cited, 
p.  316).  The  "process"  against  him  began  in  1714,  and  dragged  on  for 
nearly  twenty  years,  with  the  result  of  his  resigning  his  professorship  of 
theology  at  Glasgow  in  1729,  and  seceding  from  the  Associate  Presb3'tery 
in  1733.      Burton,  History  of  Scotland,  viii,  399-400. 

5  Cp.  the  pamphlet  by  "A  Presbyter  of  the  Church  of  England," 
attributed  to  Bishop  Hare,  cited  in  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  177-8,  and 
by  Lecky,  iii,  25. 

*  Taller,  Nos.  12,  in,  135  ;  Spectator,  Nos.  234,  381,  389,  599;  Guardian, 
Nos.  3,  9,  27,  35,  39,  55,  62,  70,  77,  83,  88,  126,  130,  169.  Most  of  the 
Guardian  papers  cited  are  by  Berkeley.  They  are  extremely  virulent  ; 
but  Steele's  run  them  hard. 


132        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 


and  the  indecorous  Steele,  neither  of  them  a  competent 
thinker,  frigidly  or  furiously  asperse  the  new  tribe  of 
freethinkers  ;  the  evang-elically  pious  Berkeley  and  the 
extremely  unevangelical  Swift  rival  each  other  in  the 
malice  of  their  attacks  on  those  who  rejected  their  creed. 
Berkeley,  a  man  of  philosophic  genius  but  intense  pre- 
possessions, maintained  Christianity  on  grounds  which 
are  the  negation  of  philosophy."  Swift,  the  genius  of 
neurotic  misanthropy,  who,  in  the  words  of  Macaulay, 
"  though  he  had  no  religion,  had  a  great  deal  of  pro- 
fessional spirit,"^  fought  venomously  for  the  creed  of 
salvation.  And  still  the  deists  multiplied.  In  the 
Earl  of  Shaftesbury 3  they  had  a  satirist  with  a  finer 
and  keener  weapon  than  was  wielded  by  either  Steele 
or  Addison,  and  a  much  better  temper  than  was  owned 
by  Swift  or  Berkeley.  He  did  not  venture  to  parade  his 
unbelief :  to  do  so  was  positively  dangerous  ;  but  his 
thrusts  at  faith  left  little  doubt  as  to  his  theory.  He  was 
at  once  dealt  with  by  the  orthodox  as  an  enemy,  and  as 
promptly  adopted  by  the  deists  as  a  champion,  important 
no  less  for  his  ability  than  for  his  rank.  Nor,  indeed, 
is  he  lacking  in  boldness  in  comparison  with  contem- 
porary writers.  The  anonymous  pamphlet  entitled  The 
Natural  History  of  Superstition,  by  the  deist,  John 
Trenchard,  M.P.  (1709),  does  not  venture  on  overt 
heresy.  But  Shaftesbury's  Letter  Concerning Entliiisiasm 
(1708),  his  Essay  on  the  Freedom  of  Wit  and  Humour 
(1709),  and  his  treatise,  The  Moralists  (1709),  had  need 
be  anonymous  because  of  their  essential  hostility  to  the 
reigning  religious  ethic. 

Such  writing  marks  a  new  stage  in  rationalistic  pro- 
paganda. Swift,  writing  in  1709,  angrily  proposes  to 
"  prevent  the  publishing  of  such   pernicious  works  as 

'  Analyst,  Queries  60  and  62  :  Defence  of  Freethinking  in  Mathematics, 
§§  5'  6,  50.     Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  141-2. 

"^  Letter  in  De  Morgan's  Neivton  :  his  Friend  :  and  his  Niece,  1885,  p.  6g. 

3  The  essays  in  the  Characteristics  (excepting  the  Inquiry  Concerning 
Virtue  and  Merit,  which  was  published  by  Toland,  without  permission, 
in  1699)  appeared  between  1708  and  1711,  being-  collected  in  the  latter 
year.  Shaftesbury  died  in  1 713,  in  which  year  appeared  his  paper  on 
The  Judgment  of  Hercules. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY         133 

under  pretence  of  freethinking  endeavour  to  overthrow 
those  tenets  in  religion  which  have  been  held  inviolable 
in  almost  all  ages."'  But  his  further  protest  that  "the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  the  divinity  of  Christ,  the 
immortality  of  the  soul,  and  even  the  truth  of  all 
revelation,  are  daily  exploded  and  denied  in  books 
openly  printed,"  points  mainly  to  the  Unitarian  pro- 
paganda. Among  freethinkers  he  names,  in  his  Argu- 
ment Against  Abolishing  Christianity  (1708),  Asgill, 
Coward,  Toland,  and  Tindal.  But  the  first  was  an 
ultra-Christian  ;  the  second  was  a  Christian  upholder  of 
the  thesis  that  spirit  is  not  immaterial  ;  and  the  last,  at 
that  date,  had  published  only  his  Four  Discourses 
(collected  in  1709)  and  his  Rights  of  the  Christian  Church, 
which  are  anti-clerical,  but  not  anti-Christian.  Professor 
Henry  Dodwell,  who  in  1706  published  an  Epistolary 
Discourse  Concerning  the  SouVs  Natural  Mortality, 
maintaining  the  doctrine  of  conditional  immortality, - 
which  he  made  dependent  on  baptism  in  the  apostolical 
succession,  was  a  devout  Christian  ;  and  no  writer  of 
that  date  went  further.  It  would  appear  that  Swift 
spoke  mainly  from  hearsay,  and  on  the  strength  of  the 
conversational  freethinking  so  common  in  society.^  But 
the  anonymous  essays  of  Shaftesbury  which  were 
issued  in  1709  might  be  the  immediate  provocation  of 
his  outbreak.^ 


'  A  Project  for  the  Advayi'cement  of  Religion.  Bohn  ed.  of  Works,  Hi, 
44.  In  this  paper  Swift  reveals  his  moral  standards  by  the  avowal 
(p.  40)  that  "  hypocrisy  is  much  more  eligfible  than  open  infidelity  and 
vice  :  it  wears  the  livery  of  relig'ion and  is  cautious  of  giving  scandal." 

-  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  {English  Thought,  i,  283)  speaks  of  Dodwell's 
thesis  as  deserving-  only  "  pity  or  contempt."  Cp.  Macaulay,  Student's 
ed.  ii,  107-8.  But  a  doctrine  of  conditional  immortality  had  been 
explicitly  put  by  Locke  in  his  Reasonableness  of  Christianity,  1695,  p.  13, 
Cp.  Professor  Eraser's  Locke,  1890,  pp.  259-260,  and  Fox  Bourne's  Life  of 
Locke,  ii,  287.  The  difference  was  that  Dodwell  elaborately  gave  his 
reasons,  which,  as  Dr.  Clarke  put  it,  made  "all  good  men  sorry,  and  all 
profane  men  rejoice." 

3  Compare  his  ironical  Argument  Against  Abolishing  Christianity, 
1708. 

■•  He  had,  however,  hailed  the  anonymous  Letter  Concerning  Enthu- 
siasm as  "  very  well  writ,"  believing  it  to  be  by  a  friend  of  his  own. 
"Enthusiasm,"  as  meaning  "popular  fanaticism,"  was  of  course  as 
repellent  to  a  churchman  as  to  the  deists. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth   CENTURY 


Deism  had  been  thus  made  in  a  manner  fashionable^ 
when,  in  17 13,  Anthony  Collins  began  a  new  deve- 
lopment by  his  Discourse  of  Freethinking.  He  had 
previously  published  a  notably  freethinking  Essay  Con- 
cerning the  Use  of  Reason  (1707)  ;  carried  on  a  discussion 
with  Clarke  on  the  question  of  the  immateriality  of  the 
soul  ;  and  issued  treatises  entitled  Priestcraft  in  Perfec- 
tion (1709,  dealing  with  the  history  of  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles)'  and  A  Vindication  of  the  Divine  Attributes 
(17 10),  exposing  the  Hobbesian  theism  of  Archbishop 
King  on  lines  followed  twenty  years  later  by  Berkeley 
in  his  Minute  Philosopher.  But  none  of  these  works 
aroused  such  a  tumult  as  the  Discourse  of  Freethinking^ 
which  may  be  said  to  sum  up  and  unify  the  drift  not 
only  of  previous  English  freethinking,  but  of  the  great 
contribution  of  Bayle,  whose  learning  and  temper 
influence  all  English  deism  from  Shaftesbury  onwards. ^ 
Collins's  book,  however,  was  unique  in  its  outspoken- 
ness. To  the  reader  of  to-day,  indeed,  it  is  no  very 
aggressive  performance  :  the  writer  was  a  man  of  imper- 
turbable amenity  and  genuine  kindliness  of  nature  ;  and 
his  style  is  the  completest  possible  contrast  to  that  of  the 
furious  replies  it  elicited.  It  was  to  Collins  that  Locke 
wrote,  in  1703:  "Believe  it,  my  good  friend,  to  love 
truth  for  truth's  sake  is  the  principal  part  of  human 
perfection  in  this  world,  and  the  seed-plot  of  all  other 
virtues  ;  and,  if  I  mistake  not,  you  have  as  much  of  it  as 
I  ever  met  with  in  anybody."     The  Discourse  does  no 

'  Dr.  E.  Syno^e,  of  Dublin  (afterwards  Archbishop  of  Tuam),  in  his 
Religion  Tryed  by  the  Test  of  Sober  and  Impartial  Reason,  published  in 
1713,  seems  to  be  writing-  before  the  issue  of  Collins's  book  when  he 
says  {Dedication,  p.  ii)  that  the  spread  of  the  "disease  not  only  of 
Heterodoxy  but  of  Infidelity"  is  "too  plain  to  be  either  denied  or 
dissembled." 

-  Leslie  affirms  in  his  Truth  of  Christianity  Demo7istrated  {I'jw,  p.  14) 
that  the  satirical  Detection  of  his  Short  Method  ivith  the  Deists,  to  which 
the  Truth  is  a  reply,  was  by  the  author  of  Priestcraft  in  Perfection  ;  but, 
while  the  Detection  has  some  of  Collins's  humour,  it  lacks  his  amenity, 
and  is  evidently  not  by  him. 

3  An  English  translation  of  the  Dictionary,  in  5  vols,  folio,  with 
"many  passag-es  restored,"  appeared  in  1734. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  uSth  CENTURY        135 

discredit  to  this  uncommon  encomium,  being'  a  luminous 
and  learned  plea  for  the  conditions  under  which  alone 
truth  can  be  prosperously  studied,  and  the  habits  of 
mind  which  alone  can  attain  it.  Of  the  many  replies, 
the  most  notorious  is  that  of  Bentley  writing  as  Phil- 
eleutheriis  Ltpsieiisis,  a  performance  which,  on  the 
strength  of  its  author's  reputation  for  scholarship,  has 
been  uncritically  applauded  by  not  a  few  critics  of  whom 
some  of  the  most  eminent  do  not  appear  to  have  read 
CoUins's  treatise.'  Bentley's  is  in  reality  pre-eminent 
only  for  insolence  and  bad  faith,  the  latter  quality  being 
sometimes  complicated  by  lapses  of  scholarship  hardly 
credible  on  its  author's  part."  One  mistranslation  which 
was  either  a  joke  or  a  printer's  error,  and  one  mis- 
spelling of  a  Greek  name,  are  the  only  heads  on  which 
Bentley  confutes  his  author.  He  had,  in  fact,  neither 
the  kind  of  knowledge  nor  the  candour  that  could  fit 
him  to  handle  the  problems  raised.  It  was  Bentley's 
cue  to  represent  Collins  as  an  atheist,  though  he  was  a 
very  pronounced  deist  ;^  and  in  the  first  uproar  Collins 
had  to  fly  to  Holland  to  avoid  arrest.^  But  deism  was 
too  general  to  permit  of  such  a  representative  being 
exiled  ;  and  he  returned  to  study  quietly,  leaving 
Bentley's  vituperation  and  prevarication  unanswered, 
with  the  other  attacks  made  upon  him.  In  17 15  he 
published  his  brief  but  masterly  Inquiry  Concerning 
Human  Liberty — anonvmous,  like  all  his  works — which 
remains  unsurpassed  in  its  essentials  as  a  statement  of 
the  case  for  Determinism. ^ 

'  The  worst  case  is  that  of  Mark  Pattison,  who  calls  Collins's  book  of 
178  pages  a  "  small  tract." 

*  See  the  details  in  Dynamics  of  Religion^  ch.  vii. 

3  "  I.tfiiorance,"  Collins  writes,  "is  the  foundation  of  Atheism,  and 
Freethinking-  the  cure  of  it"  {Discourse  of  Freethinhing^  p.  105).  Like 
Newton,  he  contemplated  only  an  impossible  atheism,  never  formulated 
by  any  writer. 

•»  Mr.  Templ{*  Scott,  in  his  Bohn  ed.  of  Swift's  Works  (iii,  166),  asserts 
that  Swift's  satire  "  frig:htened  Collins  into  Holland. "  For  this  statement 
there  is  no  evidence  whatever,  and  as  it  stands  it  is  unintelligible. 

5  Second  ed.  171 7.  Another  writer,  William  Lyons,  was  on  the  same 
track,  publishing  Tlie  Infallibility  of  Htnna)i  Judgment,  its  Dignity  and 
Excellence  (2nd  ed.  1720),  and  A  Discourse  of  the  Necessity  of  Human 
Actions  (1730). 


136        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  18 th  CENTURY 


Not  till  1723  did  he  publish  his  next  work,  A  Discourse 
of  the  Grounds  and  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religion,  a 
weighty  attack  on  the  argument  from  prophecy,  to  which 
the  replies  numbered  thirty-five  ;  on  which  followed  in 
1727  his  Scheme  of  Literal  Prophecy  Considered,  a  reply  to 
criticisms.     The  former  work  was  pronounced  by  War- 
burton  one  of  the   most  plausible  ever  written  against 
Christianity,    and    the   replies  might  have    been    left  to 
confute  each   other.      The   movement  was  now  in  full 
flood,  the  acute  Mandeville'  having  issued  in  1720  his 
Free  Thoughts  on  Religion,  and  in  1 723  a  freshly  expanded 
edition  of  his  very  anti-theological  Fable  of  the  Bees  ; 
while  the  half-deranged  ex-clergyman,  Thomas  Wool- 
STON,  contributed  in  1726-28  his  x2X\\qx  x\h2i\<\  Discourses 
on  Miracles,  of  which  Voltaire,  who  was  in  England  in 
1728,  tells  that  thirty  thousand  copies  were  sold  ;'  while 
sixty  pamphlets  were  written  in  opposition.      It  was  in 
the   middle  of  the  debate  that   Conyers    Middleton, 
Fellow  of  Trinity    College,   Cambridge,    produced    his 
Letter  from  Rome  (1729),  wherein  the  part  of  paganism 
in  Christianity  is  so  set  forth  as  to  carry  inference  further 
than   the  argument  ostensibly  goes.     In   that  year  the 
heads  of  Oxford  University  publicly  lamented  the  spread 
of  open  deism  among  the  students  ;  and  the  proclama- 
tion did   nothing  to  check  the    contagion.      In   Fogg's 
Weekly  Journal  of  July  4th,  1730,  it  is  announced  that 
"  one  of  the  principal  colleges  in  Oxford  has  of  late  been 
infested  with  deists  ;    and    that  three  deistical    students 
have  been   expelled  ;  and  a  fourth  has   had  his  dep-ree 

o 

As  to  whose  positions  see  a  paper  in  the  writer's  Essays   Towards  a 
Critical  Method,  1889. 

^  There  were  six  separate  Discourses.  Voltaire  speaks  of  "three 
editions  coup  sur  coup  of  ten  thousand  each  "  {Lettre  sur  les  auteurs 
Auglais—\x\  CEuvres,  ed.  1792,  Ixviii,  359).  This  seems  extremely  unlikely 
as  to  any  one  Discourse  ;  and  even  5,000  copies  of  each  Discourse  is  a 
hardly  credible  sale.  In  any  case,  Woolston's  Discourses  are  now  much 
seldomer  met  with  than  Collins's  Discourse  of  Freethiuking.  Alberti 
(Briefe  betreffend  den  Zustatid  der  Religion  in  Gross-Brittannien)  writes 
in  1752  that  the  Discourses  are  in  that  day  somewhat  rare,  and  seldom 
found  tog-ether.  Many  copies  were  probably  destroyed  by  the  ortho- 
dox, and  many  would  doubtless  be   thrown  away,  as  tracts  so  often 

arp. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        137 

deferred  two  years,  during  which  he  is  to  be  closely  con- 
fined in  college  ;  and,  among  other  things,  is  to  translate 
Leslie's  Short  and  Easy  Method  ivit/i  the  Deists.'''  It  is 
not  hard  to  divine  the  effect  of  such  apologetic  methods. 
In  1731,  the  author  of  an  apologetic  pamphlet  in  reply 
to  Woolston  laments  that  even  at  the  universities  young 
men  "too  often  "  become  tainted  with  "  infidelity";  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  directing  his  battery  against  those 
who  "  causelessly  profess  to  build  their  skeptical  notions  " 
on  the  writings  of  Locke,  he  complains  of  Dr.  Holdsworth 
and  other  academic  polemists  who  had  sought  to  rob 
orthodoxy  of  the  credit  of  such  a  champion  as  Locke  by 
"  consigning  him  over  to  that  class  of  freethinkers  and 
skeptics  to  which  he  was  an  adversary."^ 

With  Matthew  Tindal's  Christianity  as  Old  as 
Creation  (1730)  the  excitement  seems  to  have  reached 
high-water  mark,  that  work  eliciting  from  first  to  last 
over  a  hundred  and  fifty  replies,  at  home  and  abroad. 
Its  directness  and  simplicity  of  appeal  to  what  passed 
for  theistic  common-sense  were  indeed  fitted  to  give  it 
the  widest  audience  yet  won  by  any  deist  ;  and  its 
anti-clericalism  would  carry  it  far  among  his  fellow 
Whigs  to  begin  with.^  One  tract  of  the  period,  dedi- 
cated to  the  Queen  Regent,  complains  that  "  the 
present  raging  infidelity  threatens  an  universal  infec- 
tion," and  that  it  is  not  confined  to  the  capital,  but 
"  is  disseminated  even  to  the  confines  of  your  king- 
dom."'* Tindal,  like  Collins,  wrote  anonymously, 
and  so  escaped  prosecution,  dying  in  1733,  when 
the  second  part  of  his  book,  left  ready  for  publica- 
tion, was  deliberately  destroyed  by  Bishop  Gibson,  into 
whose  hands  it  came.  In  1736  he  and  Shaftesbury  are 
described  by  an  orthodox  apologist  as  the  "  two  oracles 
of  deism. "5     Woolston,  who  put  his  name  to  his  books, 

'  Tyerman's  Life  of  Wesley,  ed.  1871,  i,  65-66. 

^   The  Infidel  Convicted,  1731,  pp.  2,2,,  62. 

3  Tindal  (Voltaire  tells)  regarded  Pope  as  devoid  of  genius  and 
imag-ination,  and  so  trebly  earned  his  place  in  the  Ditnciad. 

*  A  Layman's  Faith "  By  a  Freethinker  and  a  Christian,"  1732. 

5  Title-pag-e  of  Rev.  Elisha  Smith's  Cicre  of  Deism,  ist  ed.  1736;  3rd 
ed.   1 740. 


1 38        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

is  commonly  said  to  have  paid  the  penalty  of  imprison- 
ment for  the  rest  of  his  life  (d.  1733),  being  unable  to 
pay  a  fine  of  ;^ioo  ;  but  Voltaire  positively  asserts  that 
"  nothing  is  more  false  "  than  the  statement  that  he  died 
in  prison  ;  adding :  "  Several  of  my  friends  have  seen 
him  in  his  house:  he  died  there,  at  liberty."'  In  any 
case,  he  was  sentenced  ;  and  the  punishment  was  the 
measure  of  the  anger  felt  at  the  continuous  advance  of 
deistic  opinions,  or  at  least  against  hostile  criticism  of 
the  Scriptures.  Unitariafiism,  formerly  a  hated  heresy, 
was  now  in  comparison  leniently  treated,  because  of  its 
deference  to  Scriptural  authority.  Thus  the  Unitarian 
Edward  Elwall,  who  had  published  a  book  called  A 
True  Testimony  for  God  and  his  Sacred  Law  (1724),  for 
which  he  was  prosecuted  at  Stafford  in  1726,  was  allowed 
by  the  judge  to  argue  his  cause  fully,  and  was  uncondi- 
tionally acquitted,  to  the  displeasure  of  the  clergy. 
Anti-scriptural  writers  could  not  hope  for  such  toleration, 
being  doubly  odious  to  the  church,  Berkeley,  in  1721, 
had  complained  bitterly-  of  the  general  indifference  to 
religion,  which  his  writings  had  done  nothing  to  alter; 
and  in  1736  he  angrily  demanded  that  blasphemy  should 
be  punished  like  high  treason. ^  W\s  Minute  Philosopher 
(1732)  betrays  throughout  his  angry  consciousness  of 
the  vogue  of  freethinking  after  twenty  years  of  resistance 
from  his  profession  ;  and  that  performance  is  singularly 
ill  fitted  to  alter  the  opinions  of  unbelievers.  In  his 
earlier  papers  attacking  them  he  had  put  a  stress  of 
malice  that,  in  a  mind  of  his  calibre,  is  startling  even  to 
the  student  of  religious  historv."*  It  reveals  him  as  no 
less  possessed  by  the  passion  of  creed  than  the  most 
ignorant  priest  of  his  church.  For  him  all  freethinkers 
were  detested  disturbers  of  his  emotional  life  ;  and  of  the 
best  of  them,  as  Collins,  Shaftesbury,  and  Spinoza,  he 

'  Lettre  sur  les  auteurs  Anfflais,  as  cited.  Voltaire  tells  that,  when  a 
she-big'ot  one  day  spat  in  Woolston's  face,  he  calmly  remarked  :  "  It 
was  so  that  the  Jews  treated  your  God." 

*  Essay  Toivards  Preventing  the  Ruin  of  Great  Britain. 

3  Discourse  to  Magistrates. 

■*  Guardian,  Nos.  3,  55,  88. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        139 

Speaks  with  positive  fury.  In  the  Minute  Philosopher, 
half-conscious  of  the  wrongness  of  his  temper,  he  sets 
himself  to  make  the  unbelievers  fig^ure  in  dialoefue  as 
ignorant,  pretentious,  and  coarse-natured,  while  his  own 
mouthpieces  are  meant  to  be  benign,  urbane,  wise,  and 
persuasive.  Yet  in  the  very  pages  so  planned  he 
unwittingly  reveals  that  the  freethinkers  whom  he  goes 
about  to  caricature  were  commonly  good-natured  in 
tone,  while  he  becomes  as  virulent  as  ever  in  his  eager- 
ness to  discredit  them.  Not  a  paragraph  in  the  book 
attains  to  the  spirit  of  judgment  or  fairness :  all  is 
special  pleading,  overstrained  and  embittered  sarcasm, 
rankling  animus.  No  man  was  less  qualified  to  write  a 
well-balanced  dialogue  as  between  his  own  side  and  its 
opponents  ;  unless  it  be  in  the  sense  that  his  passion 
recoils  on  his  own  case.  Even  while  setting  up  nine- 
pins of  ill-put  "infidel"  argument  to  knock  down,  he 
elaborates  futilities  of  rebuttal,  indicating  to  every  atten- 
tive reader  the  slightness  of  his  rational  basis. 

On  the  strength  of  this  performance  he  might  fitly  be 
termed  the  most  ill-conditioned  sophist  of  his  age,  were 
it  not  for  the  perception  that  religious  feeling  in  him 
has  become  a  pathological  phase,  and  that  he  suffers 
incomparably  more  from  his  own  passions  than  he  can 
cause  his  enemies  to  suffer  by  his  eager  thrusts  at  them. 
More  than  almost  any  gifted  pietist  of  modern  times  he 
sets  us  wondering  at  the  power  of  creed  in  certain  cases 
to  overgrow  judgment  and  turn  to  naught  the  rarest 
faculties.  No  man  in  Berkeley's  day  had  a  finer  natural 
lucidity  and  suppleness  of  intelligence  ;  yet  perhaps  no 
polemist  on  his  side  did  less  either  to  make  converts  or 
to  establish  a  sound  intellectual  practice.  Plain  men  on 
the  freethinking  side  he  must  either  have  bewildered  by 
his  metaphysic  or  revolted  by  his  spite  :  while  to  the 
more  efficient  minds  he  stood  revealed  as  a  kind  of 
inspired  child,  rapt  in  the  construction  and  manipulation 
of  a  set  of  brilliant  sophisms  which  availed  as  much  for 
any  other  creed  as  for  his  own.  To  the  armoury  of 
Christian   apologetic  now  growing  up  he  contributed  a 


I40        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

special  form  of  the  sceptical  arg-ument:  freethinkers,  he 
declared,  made  certain  arbitrary  or  irrational  assump- 
tions in  accepting  Newton's  doctrine  of  fluxions,  and  it 
was  only  their  prejudice  that  prevented  them  from  being 
similarly  accommodating-  to  Christian  mysteries.'  It  is 
a  kind  of  argument  dear  to  minds  pre-convinced  and 
incapable  of  a  logical  revision,  but  worse  than  inept  as 
against  opponents.  To  theosophy,  indeed,  Berkeley 
rendered  a  more  successful  service  in  presenting  it  with 
the  no  better  formula  of  "  existence  dependent  upon 
consciousness  " — a  verbalism  which  has  served  the 
purposes  of  theology  in  the  philosophic  schools  down 
till  our  own  day.  For  his,  however,  the  popular 
polemic  value  of  such  a  theorem  must  have  been  suffi- 
ciently countervailed  by  his  vehement  championship  of 
the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience  in  its  most  extreme 
form — "that  loyalty  is  a  virtue  or  moral  duty  ;  and  dis- 
loyalty or  rebellion,  in  the  most  strict  and  proper  sense, 
a  vice  or  crime  against  the  law  of  nature."" 

It  belonged  to  the  overstrung  temperament  of 
Berkeley  that,  like  a  nervous  artist,  he  should  figure 
to  himself  all  his  freethinking  antagonists  as  personally 
odious,  himself  growing  odious  under  the  obsession  ; 
and  he  solemnly  asserts,  in  \{\^  Discourse  to  Magistrates^ 
that  there  had  been  "  lately  set  up  within  this  city  of 
Dublin"  an  "execrable  fraternity  of  blasphemers," 
calling  themselves  "  blasters,"  and  forming  "  a  distinct 
society,  whereof  the  proper  and  avowed  business  shall 
be  to  shock  all  serious  Christians  by  the  most  impious 
and  horrid  blasphemies,  uttered  in  the  most  public 
manner."^  There  appears  to  be  not  a  grain  of  truth 
in  this  astonishing  assertion,  to  which  no  subsequent 
historian  has  paid  the  slightest  attention.  In  a  period 
in  which  freethinking  books  had  been  again  and  again 
burned  in  Dublin  by  the  public  hangman,  such  a  society 
could  be  projected  only  in  a  nightmare  ;  and  Berkeley's 

'  The  Analyst,  Queries  55-67. 

^  Discourse  of  Passive  Obedience,  §  26. 

3    Works,  ed.  1837,  p.  352. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        141 

hallucination  may  serve  as  a  sign  of  the  extent  to 
which  his  judgment  had  been  deranged  by  his 
passions.' 

When  educated  Christians  could  be  so  habitually 
envenomed  as  was  Berkeley,  there  was  doubtless  a 
measure  of  contrary  heat  among  English  unbelievers  ; 
but,  apart  altogether  from  what  could  be  described  as 
blasphemy,  unbelief  abounded  in  the  most  cultured 
society  of  the  day.  Bolingbroke's  rationalism  had  been 
privately  well  known  ;  and  so  distinguished  a  personage  as 
the  brilliant  and  scholarly  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu, 
hated  by  Pope,  is  one  of  the  reputed  freethinkers  of  her 
time.^  In  the  very  year  of  the  publication  of  Berkeley's 
Minute  Philosopher,  the  first  two  epistles  of  the  Essay  on 
Man  of  his  own  friend  and  admirer,  Pope,  gave  a  new 
currency  to  the  form  of  optimistic  deism  created  by 
Shaftesbury,  and  later  elaborated  by  Bolingbroke.  Pope 
was  always  anxiously  hostile  in  his  allusions  to  the 
professed  freethinkers ^ — among  whom  Bolingbroke  only 
posthumously  enrolled  himself — and  in  private  he 
specially  aspersed  Shaftesbury,  from  whom  he  had 
taken  so  much  ;*  but  his  prudential  tactic  gave  all  the 
more  currency  to  the  virtual  deism  he  enunciated. 
Given  out  without  any  critical  allusion  to  Christianity, 
and  put  forward  as  a  vindication  of  the  ways  of  God  to 
men,  it  gave  to  heresy  the  status  of  a  well-bred  piety. 
A  good  authority  pronounces  that  "  the  Essay  on  Mail 

^  See  the  whole  context,  which  palpitates  with  excitement. 

^  Mr.  Walter  Sichel  (Bolingbroke  and  his  Times,  1901,  i,  175)  thinks  fit 
to  dispose  of  her  attitude  as  "  her  aversion  to  the  church  and  to  every- 
thing- that  transcended  her  own  faculties. "  So  far  as  the  evidence  goes, 
her  faculties  were  much  superior  to  those  of  most  of  her  orthodox  con- 
temporaries.    For  her  tone  see  her  letters. 

3  E.g.,  Dunciad,  ii,  399  ;  iii,  212  ;  iv,  492. 

*  Voltaire  commented  pointedly  on  Pope's  omission  to  make  any 
reference  to  Shaftesbury,  while  vending-  his  doctrine.  {Lettres 
Aiigiaises,  xxii.)  As  a  matter  of  fact  Pope  does  in  the  Dunciad  (iv,  488) 
refer  maliciously  to  the  Theocles  of  Shaftesbury's  Aloralists  as  maintain- 
ing a  Lucretian  theism  or  virtual  atheism.  The  explanation  is  that 
Shaftesbury  had  sharply  criticised  the  political  course  of  Bolingbroke, 
who  in  turn  ignored  him  as  a  thinker.  See  the  present  writer's  introd. 
to  Shaftesbury's  Characteristics,  ed.  1900  ;  and  cp.  W.  R.  Scott,  Francis 
Hutcheson,  1900,  p.  loi. 


142        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

did  more  to  spread  English  deism  in  France  than  all  the 
works  of  Shaftesbury."' 

The  line  of  the  Essay  which  now  reads 

The  soul,  uneasy  and  confined /Vo?;;  home, 

originally  ran  "at  home  ";  but,  says  Warton,  "  this  expression 
seeming  to  exclude  a  future  existence,  as,  to  speak  the  plain 
truth,  it  7vas  intended  to  do,  it  was  altered  " — presumably  by 
Warburton.  (Warton's  Essay  on  Pope,  4th  ed.  ii,  67.)  The 
Spinozistic  or  pantheistic  character  of  much  of  the  Essay  on 
Man  was  noted  by  various  critics,  in  particular  by  the  French 
Academician  De  CrousuziExamen  de  P Essay  de  M.  Pope  sur 
PHoinme,  1748).  When  the  younger  Racine,  writing  to  the 
Chevalier  Ramsay  in  1742,  charged  the  Essay  with  irreligion. 
Pope  wrote  him  repudiating  alike  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz. 
{Warton,  ii,  121.)  In  1755,  however,  the  Abbe  Gauchat 
renewed  the  attack,  declaring  that  the  Essay  was  "neither 
Christian  nor  philosophic "  {Lettres  Critiques,  i,  346).  War- 
burton  at  first  charged  the  poem  with  rank  atheism,  and  after- 
wards vindicated  it  in  his  manner.  (Warton,  i,  125.)  But  in 
Germany,  in  the  youth  of  Goethe,  we  find  the  Essay  regarded 
by  Christians  as  an  unequivocally  deistic  poem.  (Goethe's 
Wahrheit  und  Dichtxmg,  Th.  II,  B.  vii  :  Werke,  ed.  1866,  xi, 
263.)  And  by  a  modern  Christian  polemist  the  Essay  Is 
described  as  "  the  best  positive  result  of  English  deism  in  the 
eighteenth  century "  (Gostwick,  German  Culture  and  Chris- 
tianity, 1882,  p.  31). 

In  point  of  fact,  though  Voltaire  testifies  from 
personal  knowledge  that  there  were  in  England  in  his 
day  many  principled  atheists,-  there  was  little  overt 
atheism, 3  whether  by  reason  of  the  special  odium  attach- 
ing to  that  way  of  thinking,  or  of  a  real  production  of 
theistic  belief  by  the  concurrence  of  the  deistic  propa- 
ganda on  this  head  with  that  of  the  clergy,  themselves 
in  so  many  cases  deists."^     Collins  observed  that  nobody 

'■  Texte,  Rousseau  and  the  Cosmopolitan  Spirit  in  Literature,  Eng.  trans, 
pp.  117-118. 

-  Diet.  Philos.  art.  Athee,  §  2. 

3  Wise,  in  his  adaptation  of  Cudworth,  A  Confutation  of  the  Reason 
and  Pliilosophy  of  Atheism  (1706),  writes  that  "  the  philosophical  atheists 
are  but  few  in  number,"  and  their  objections  so  weak  "as  that  they 
deserve  not  a  hearing:  but  rather  neglect";  but  goes  on  to  admit  that 
*'  one  or  two  broachers  of  'em  may  be  thought  able  to  infect  a  whole 
nation,  as sad  experience  tells  us"  (work  cited,  i,  5). 

■*  Complaint  to  this  effect  was  made  by  orthodox  writers.  The  Scotch 
Professor  Halyburton,  for  instance,  complains  tliat  in  many  sermons  in 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  iSth  CENTURY        143 


had  doubted  the  existence  of  God  until  the  Boyle 
lecturers  began  to  prove  it ;  and  Clarke  had  more  than 
justified  the  jest  by  arguing,  in  his  Boyle  Lectures  for 
1705,  that  all  deism  logically  leads  to  atheism.  But 
though  the  apologists  roused  much  discussion  on  the 
theistic  issue,  the  stress  of  the  apologetic  literature 
passed  from  the  theme  of  atheism  to  that  of  deism. 
Shaftesbury's  early  Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue  had 
assumed  the  existence  of  a  good  deal  of  atheism  ;  but 
his  later  writings,  and  those  of  his  school,  do  not 
indicate  any  great  atheistic  opposition.'  Even  the 
discussion  on  the  immateriality  and  immortality  of  the 
soul — which  began  with  the  Grand  Essay  of  Dr. 
William  Coward, ^  in  1704,  and  was  taken  up,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  the  non-juror  DodwelP — was  conducted 
on  either  orthodox  or  deistic  lines.  Coward  wrote  as  a 
professed  Christian, •♦  to  maintain,  "against  impostures  of 
philosophy,"  that  "matter  and  motion  must  be  the 
foundation  of  thought  in  men  and  brutes."  Collins 
maintained  against  Clarke  the  proposition  that  matter 
is  capable  of  thought;  and  Samuel  Strutt  ("of  the 
Temple"),  whose  Philosophical  Inquiry  into  the  Physical 
Spring  of  Human  Actions,  and  the  Immediate  Cause  of 
Tliinking  (1732),  is  a  most  tersely  cogent  sequence  of 
materialistic  argument,  never  raises  any  question  of 
deity.  The  result  was  that  the  problem  of  "materialism" 
was  virtually  dropped,  Strutt's  essay  in  particular 
passing  into  general  oblivion. 

his  day  "  Heathen  Morality  has  been  substituted  in  the  room  of  Gospel 
Holiness.  And  Ethicks  by  some  have  been  preached  instead  of  the 
Gospels  of  Christ."  Natural  Religion  Insufficient  (Edinburgfh),  1714, 
p.  25.      Cp.  pp.  23,  26-27,  59'  etc. 

'  The  Moralists  deals  rather  with  strict  skepticism  than  with  substan- 
tive atheism. 

'  The  Grand  Essay  ;  or,  a  Vindication  of  Reason  and  Religion  Against 
Impostures  0/ Philosophy.  The  book  was  condemned  to  be  burned  by 
the  House  of  Commons. 

3  Above,  p.  133. 

^  Mr.  Herbert  Paul,  in  his  essay  on  Swi[t(Men  and  Letters,  1901,  p.  267), 
lumps  as  deists  the  four  writers  named  by  Swift  in  his  Argument.  Not 
having:  read  them,  he  thinks  fit  to  asperse  all  four  as  bad  writers. 
Asyill,  as  was  noted  by  Coleridg-e,  was  one  of  the  best  writers  of  his 
time.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  master  of  the  staccato  style,  practised  by  Mr. 
Paul  with  less  success. 


144        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSfh  CENTURY 

It  was  replied  to,  however,  with   the  Inquiry  of  Collins,  as 
late  as  1760,  by  a  Christian  controversialist  who  admits  Strutt 
to  have  been  "a  gentleman  of  an  excellent  genius  for  philoso- 
phical inquiries,  and  a  close  reasoner  from  those  principles  he 
laid  down  "  {An  Essay  towards  demonstrating  the  Immateriality 
and  Free  Agency   of  the  Soul,  1760,   p.    94).     The     Rev.    Mr. 
Monk,  in  his  Life  of  Bentley  {2nd  ed.    1833,  ii,  391),  absurdly 
speaks  of  Strutt  as  having  "  dressed  up  the  arguments  of  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury  and  other  enemies   of  religion  in  a  new 
shape."     The  reverend  gentleman  cannot  have  paid  any  atten- 
tion  to  the  arguments   either  of   Herbert  or  of  Strutt,  which 
have  no  more   in   common  than  those   of  Toland  and   Hume. 
Strutt's  book  was   much   too  closely  I'easoned   to   be  popular. 
His  name  was  for  the  time,  however,  associated  with  a  famous 
scandal  at  Cambridge  University.     When  in   1739  proceedings 
were    taken    against   what   was    described    as  an   "atheistical 
society"  there,  Strutt  was  spoken  of  as  its  "oracle."     One  of 
the  members  was  Paul  Whitehead,  satirised  by  Pope.     Another, 
Tinkler  Ducket,  a  Fellow  of  Caius  College,  in  holy  orders,  was 
prosecuted  in  the  Vice-Chancellor's  Court  on  the  twofold  charge 
of  proselytising  for  atheism    and    of  attempting  to    seduce  a 
"  female."     In  his  defence  he  explained  that  he  had  been  for 
some  time  "once   more  a  believer  in  God  and  Christianity"; 
but  was  nevertheless  expelled.     See  Monk's  Life  of  Bentley,  as 
cited,  ii,  391  sq. 
No  less  marked  is  the  failure  to  develop  the  "higher 
criticism"    from    the    notable    start    made    in     1739    in 
the    very    remarkable     Inqidry   into    the    Jewish    and 
Christian  Revelations  by  Samuel  Parvish,  who  made  the 
vital   discovery  that  Deuteronomy   is  a   product  of  the 
seventh  century  B.C.'     His  book,  which  is  in  the  form  of 
a  dialogue  between  a  Christian  and  a  Japanese,  went  into 
a  second  edition  (1746),  but  his  idea  struck  too  deep  for 
the  critical  faculty  of  that  age  ;   and  not  till  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  the  clue  found  again  by  De  Wette, 
in   Germany.^     Parvish  came  at    the  end    of  the   main 
deistic   movement,^  and    by  that    time  the  more  open- 

'  Work  cited,  p.  324. 

=  Cp.  Cheyne,  Founders  of  Old  Testattient  Criticism,  1893,  p.  2. 

3  Dr.  Cheyne  expresses  surprise  that  a  "  theolog:ical  writer"  who  got 
so  far  should  not  have  been  "  prompted  by  his  g-ood  genius  to  follow  up 
his  advantage."  It  is,  however,  rather  remarkable  that  Parvish,  who 
was  a  bookseller  at  Guildford  (Alberti,  Bricfe,  p.  426),  should  have 
achieved  what  he  did.  It  was  through  not  being  a  theological  writer 
that  he  went  so  far,  no  theologian  of  his  day  following  him. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        145 


minded  men  had  come  to  a  point  of  view  from  which  it 
did  not  greatly  matter  when  Deuteronomy  was  written, 
or  precisely  how  a  cultus  was  built  up  ;  while  orthodoxy 
could  not  dream  of  abandoning  its  view  of  inspiration. 
There  was  thus  an  arrest  alike  of  historical  criticism 
and  of  the  higher  philosophic  thought  under  the  stress 
of  the  concrete  disputes  over  ethics,  miracles,  prophecy, 
and  politics  ;  and  a  habit  of  taking  deity  for  granted 
became  normal,  with  the  result  that  when  the  weak 
point  was  pressed  upon  by  Law  and  Butler  there  was  a 
sense  of  blankness  on  both  sides.  But  among  men 
theistically  inclined,  the  argument  of  Tindal  against 
revelationism  was  extremely  telling,  and  it  had  more 
literary  impressiveness  than  any  writing  on  the  orthodox 
side  before  Butler.  By  this  time  the  philosophic  influence 
of  Spinoza — seen  as  early  as  1699  in  Shaftesbury's 
Inquiry  Concerning  Virtue,"^  and  avowed  by  Clarke  when 
he  addressed  his  Demonstration  (1705)  "more  particularly 
in  answer  to  Mr.  Hobbs,  Spinoza,  and  their  followers" — 
had  spread  among  the  studious  class,  greatly  reinforcing 
the  deistic  movement  ;  so  that  in  1732  Berkeley,  who 
ranked  him  among  "weak  and  wicked  writers,"  described 
him  as  "the  erreat  leader  of  our  modern  infidels." 


fc>' 


See  the  Minute  Philosopher,  Dial,  vii,  §  29.  Similarly 
Leland,  in  the  Supplement  (1756)  to  his  VieTV  of  the  Deistical 
Writers  (afterwards  incorporated  as  Letter  VI),  speaks  of 
Spinoza  as  "the  most  applauded  doctor  of  modern  atheism." 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  opinion  {English  Thotight,  i,  33),  that  "few 
of  the  deists,  probably,"  read  Spinoza,  seems  to  be  thus  out- 
weighed. If  they  did  not  in  great  numbers  read  the  Ethica, 
they  certainly  read  the  Tractatiis  and  the  letters.  As  early  as 
1677  we  find  Stillingfleet,  in  the  preface  to  his  Letter  to  a  Deist, 
speaking  of  Spinoza  as  "a  late  author  [who]  I  hear  is  mightily 
in  vogue  among  many  who  cry  up  anything  on  the  atheistical 
side,  though  never  so  weak  and  trifling";  and  further  of  a 
mooted  proposal  to  translate  the  Tractatiis  Theologico-Politicns 
into  English.  A  translation  was  published  in  16S9.  In 
Gildon's  work  of  recantation,  The  Deist'' s Manual  {lyoc^,  p.  192), 
the   indifferent   Pleonexus,  who  "took    more    delight    in    bags 

^   See  the  author's  introduction  to  ed.  of  the  Characteristics,  1900. 
VOL.   II  L 


O 


146        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

than  in  books,"  and  demurs  to  accumulating;  the  latter,  avows 
that  he  has  a  few,  among"  them  being"  Hobbes  and  Spinoza. 
Evelyn,  writing'  about  1680-90,  speaks  of  "  that  infamous  book, 
the  Tractatus  Theohgico-PoUticus,''^  as  "a  wretched  obstacle  to 
the  searchers  of  holy  truth"  {The  History  of  Religion,  1850, 
p.  xxvii).  Cp.  Halyburton,  Natural  Religion  Insufficient, 
Edinburg^h,  1714,  p.  31,  as  to  the  "great  vogue  arnong  our 
young  Gentry  and  Students  "  of  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  and  others. 

Among  the  deists  of  the  upper  classes  was  the  young 
William  Pitt,  afterwards  Lord  Chatham,  if,  as  has  been 
alleged,  it  was  he  who  in  1733,  two  years  before  he 
entered  Parliament,  contributed  to  the  London  Journal  a 
"Letter  on  Superstition,"  the  work  of  a  pronounced 
freethinker.'  On  the  other  hand,  such  deistic  writing  as 
that  of  Thomas  Chubb,  an  energetic  tallow-chandler  of 
Salisbury  (d.  1747),  in  a  multitude  of  tracts  brought  an 
ethical  "  Christian  rationalism  "  within  the  range  of  the 
imscholarly  many  ;  while  Thomas  Morgan  (d.  1741), 
a  physician,  began  in  the  Mora/ P/u7osop/ier,  1739-1740,^ 
to  sketch  a  rationalistic  theory  of  Christian  origins, 
besides  putting  the  critical  case  with  new  completeness. 
At  the  same  time  Peter  Annet  (1693-1769),  a  school- 
master and  inventor  of  a  system  of  shorthand,  widened 
the  propaganda  in  other  directions.  He  seems  to  have 
been  the  first  freethought  lecturer,  for  his  first  pamphlet, 
Judging  for  Ourselves  :  or,  Freethinking  the  Great  Duty 
of  Religion,  "  By  P.  A.,  Minister  of  the  Gospel  "  (1739), 
consists  of  "  Two  Lectures  delivered  at  Plaisterer's 
Hall."  Through  all  his  propaganda,  of  which  the 
more  notable  portions  are  his  Supernaturals  Examined 
and  a  series  of  controversies  on  the  Resurrection, 
there  runs  a  train  of  shrewd  critical  sense,  put  forth  in 
crisp  and  vivacious  English,  which  made  him  a  popular 
force.  At  length,  when  in  1761  he  issued  nine  numbers 
of  The  Free  Inquirer,  in  which  he  attached  the  Penta- 
teuch   with    much    insight    and    cogency,    but   with   a 

'  The  question  remains  obscure.  Cp.  the  Letter  cited,  reprinted  at 
end  of  Carver's  i83wed.  oi  Paine's  Works  (New  York);  F.  Thackeray's 
Life  of  Cliatliam,  ii,  405  ;  and  Chatham's  '' scalpintf -knife  "  speech. 

^  A  V indication  of  the  Moral  Philosopher  appeared  in  1741. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        147 

certain  want  of  rational  balance  (shown  also  in  his 
treatise,  Social  Bliss  Considered,  1749),  he  was  made  a 
victim  of  the  then  strengthened  spirit  of  persecution, 
being  sentenced  to  stand  thrice  in  the  pillory  with  the 
label  "For  Blasphemy,"  and  to  suffer  a  year's  hard 
labour.  Nevertheless,  he  was  popular  enough  to  start 
a  school  on  his  release. 

Such  popularity,  of  course,  was  alien  to  the  literary 
and  social  traditions  of  the  century,  and  from  the  literary 
point  of  view  the  main  line  of  deistic  propaganda,  as 
apart  from  the  essays  and  treatises  of  Hume  and  the 
posthumous  works  of  Bolingbroke,  ends  with  the 
younger  Henry  Dodwell's  (anonymous)  ironical 
essay,  Christianity  not  Founded  on  Argument  (1741). 
So  rigorously  congruous  is  the  reasoning  of  that 
brilliant  treatise  that  some  have  not  quite  unjustifiably 
taken  it  for  the  work  of  a  dogmatic  believer,  standing  at 
some  such  position  as  that  taken  up  before  him  by 
Huet,  and  in  recent  times  by  Cardinal  Newman.'  He 
argues,  for  instance,  not  merely  that  reason  can  yield 
none  of  the  confidence  which  belongs  to  true  faith,  but 
that  it  cannot  duly  strengthen  the  moral  will  against 
temptations.-  But  it  at  once  elicited  a  number  of 
replies,  all  treating  it  unhesitatingly  as  an  anti-Christian 
work  ;  and  Leland  handles  it  as  bitterly  as  he  does  any 
openly  freethinking  treatise. ^  Its  thesis  might  have 
been  seriously  supported  by  reference  to  the  intellectual 
history  of  the  preceding  thirty  years,  wherein  much 
argument  had  certainly  failed  to  establish  the  reigning 
creed  or  to  discredit  the  unbelievers. 

Of  the  work  done  by  English  deism  thus  far,  it  may 
suffice  to  say  that  within  two  generations  it  had  more 
profoundly  altered  the  intellectual  temper  of  educated 
men  than  any  religious  movement  had  ever  done  in  the 
same  time.  This  appears  above  all  from  the  literature 
produced    by    orthodoxy    in    reply,    where    the     mere 

'  Cp.  Cairns,  Unbelief  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  1881,  p.  loi. 

=  Ed.  1741,  p.  30  sq. 

3    Vieiv  of  the  Deist ical  Writers,  Letter  XI  (X  in  1st  ed. ). 


148        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  18th  CENTURY 

defensive  resort  to  reasoning,  apart  from  the  accounts  of 
current  rationalism,  outgoes  anything  in  the   previous 
history  of  literature.     Could   the  discussion  have  been 
continuous — could    England    have   remained    what   she 
was  in  the  main  deistic  period,  a  workshop  of  investiga- 
tion and  a  battleground  of  ideas — all  European  develop- 
ment might  have  been  indefinitely  hastened.     But  the 
deists,   for   the    most    part   educated   men   appealing  to 
educated   men  or  to  the  shrewdest  readers  among  the 
artisans,   had    not    learned    to    reckon   with  the  greater 
social  forces  ;  and  beyond  a  certain  point  they  could  not 
affect  England's  intellectual  destinies.     The  clergy,  who 
could  not  argue  them  down  in  the  court  of  culture,  had 
in  their  own  jurisdiction  the  great  mass  of  the  uneducated 
lower  classes,  and  the  great  mass  of  the  women   of  all 
classes,  whom  the   ideals  of  the  age    kept  uneducated 
with   a  difference.     With    the    multitude    remaining   a 
ready  hotbed  for  new  "enthusiasm,"  and  the  women  of 
the  middle  and  upper  orders  no  less  ready  nurturers  of 
new  generations  of  young  believers,  the  work  of  emanci- 
pation was  but  begun  when  deism  was  made  "  fashion- 
able."    And  with  England  on  the  way  to  a  new  era  at 
once  of  industrial  and  imperial  expansion,  in  which  the 
energies  that  for  a  generation  had  made  her  a  leader  of 
European  thought  were  diverted  to  arms  and  to  com- 
merce,   the    critical    and     rationalising    work     of     the 
deistical   generation  could   not  ^o  on  as  it  had  begun. 
That  generation    left  its   specific  mark  on  the  statute- 
book  in  a  complete  repeal  of  the  old   laws  relating  to 
witchcraft;'  on  literature  in  a  whole  library  of  propa- 
ganda and  apology  ;  on  moral  and  historic  science  in  a 
new  movement  of  humanism,  which  was  to  culminate  in 
the   French   Revolution.     But  for  reasons  lying  in  the 
environment  as  well  as  in  its  own  standpoint,  deism  was 
not  destined  to   rise  on  continuous  stepping-stones   to 
social  dominion. 

Currency  has  been  given  to  a  misconception  of  intellectual 
'  Act  9th  Geo.  II  (1736),  ch.  5. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        149 

history  by  the  authoritative  statement  that  in  the  deistic  con- 
trovers)'  "all  that  was  intellectually  venerable  in  Ent^land " 
appeared  "on  the  side  of  Christianity"  (Sir  Leslie  Stephen, 
English  Thotight  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  i,  86).  The  propo- 
sition seems  to  be  an  echo  of  orthodox  historiography,  as 
Buckle  had  before  written  in  his  note-book:  "In  Eni^land 
skepticism  made  no  head.  Such  men  as  Toland  and  Tindal, 
Collins,  Shaftesbury,  Woolston,  were  no  match  for  Clarke, 
Warburton,  and  Lardner.  They  could  make  no  head  till  the 
time  of  Middleton  "  {Misc.  Works,  abridged  ed.  i,  321) — a 
strain  of  assertion  which  clearly  proceeds  on  no  study  of  the 
period.  In  the  first  place,  all  the  writing  on  the  freethinking 
side  was  done  under  peril  of  Blasphemy  Laws,  and  under 
menace  of  all  the  calumny  and  ostracism  that  in  Christian 
society  follow  on  advanced  heresy  ;  while  the  orthodox  side 
could  draw  on  the  entire  clerical  profession,  over  ten  thousand 
strong,  and  trained  for  and  pledged  to  defence  of  the  faith. 
Yet,  when  all  is  said,  the  ordinary  list  of  deists  amply  suffices  to 
disprove  Sir  L.  Stephen's  phrase.  His  "  intellectually  vener- 
able" list  runs  :  Bentley,  Locke,  Berkeley,  Clarke,  Butler,  Water- 
land,  Warburton,  Sherlock,  Gibson,  Conybeare,  Smalbroke, 
Leslie,  Law,  Leland,  Lardner,  Foster,  Doddridge,  Lyttelton, 
Barrlngton,  Addison,  Pope,  Swift.  He  might  have  added 
Newton  and  Boyle.  Sykes,'  Balguy,  Stebbing,  and  a  "  host  of 
others,"  he  declares  to  be  "  now  for  the  most  part  as  much 
forgotten  as  their  victims  "  ;  Young  and  Blackmore  he  admits 
to  be  in  similar  case.  All  told,  the  list  includes  only  three  or 
four  men  of  any  permanent  interest  as  thinkers,  apart  froin 
Newton  ;  and  only  three  or  four  more  Important  as  writers. 
To  speak  of  Waterland,-  Warburton,^  Smalbroke,'*  Sherlock, 
Leslie,  and  half-a-dozen  more  as  "intellectually  venerable" 
seems  grotesque  ;  even  Bentley  is  a  strange  subject  for 
veneration. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  list  of  "  the  despised  deists,"  who 


'  Really  an  abler  man  than  half  the  others  in  the  list,  but  himself  a 
good  deal  of  a  heretic. 

-  Whose  doctrine  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  elsewhere  (p.  258)  pronounces  a 
"brutal  theology  which  gloried  in  trampling  on  the  best  instincts  of  its 
opponents,"  and  a  "most  unlovely  product  of  eighteenth-century 
speculation." 

3  Of  Warburton  Sir  Leslie  writes  elsewhere  (p.  353)  that  "  this  colossus 
was  built  up  of  rubbish."  See  p.  352  for  samples.  Again  he  speaks 
(p.  368)  of  the  bishop's  pretensions  as  "colossal  impudence."  It  should 
be  noted,  further,  that  Warburton's  teaching  in  the  Divine  Legation 
was  a  gross  heresy  in  the  eyes  of  William  Law,  who  in  his  Sliort  but 
Sufficient  Confutation  pronounced  its  main  thesis  a  "  most  horrible 
doctrine."     Ed.  1768,  as  cited,  i,  217. 

■»  As  to  whose  "  senile  incompetence  "  see  same  vol.  p.  234. 


150        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

"make  but  a  poor  show  when  compared  with  this  imposing 
list,"  runs  thus  :  Herbert,  Hobbes,  Blount,  Halley  (well 
known  to  be  an  unbeliever,  though  he  did  not  write  on  the 
subject),  Toland,  Shaftesbury,  Collins,  Mandeville,  Tindal, 
Chubb,  Morgan,  Dodwell,  Middleton,  Hume,  Bolingbroke, 
Gibbon.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  on  what  principles 
this  group  is  excluded  from  the  intellectual  veneration  so 
liberally  allotted  to  the  other.  It  is  nothing  to  the  purpose 
that  Shaftesbury  and  Mandeville  wrote  "covertly"  and  "  in- 
directl}'."  The  law  and  the  conditions  compelled  them  to  do 
so.  It  is  still  more  beside  the  case  to  say  that  "  Hume  can 
scarcely  be  reckoned  among  the  deists.  He  is  already  [when  ?] 
emerging  into  a  higher  atmosphere."  Hume  wrote  explicitly 
as  a  deist  ;  and  only  in  his  posthumous  Dialogues  did  he  pass 
on  to  the  atheistic  position.  At  no  time,  moreover,  was  he  "  on 
the  side  of  Christianity."  0\\  the  other  hand,  Locke  and  Clarke 
and  Pope  were  clearly  "emerging  into  a  higher  atmosphere" 
than  Christianity,  since  Locke  is  commonly  reckoned  by  the 
culture-historians,  and  even  by  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  as  making 
for  deism  ;  Pope  was  the  pupil  of  Bolingbroke,  and  wrote  as 
such-;  and  Clarke  was  shunned  as  an  Arian.  Newton,  again, 
was  a  Unitarian,  and  Leibnitz  accused  his  system  of  making 
for  irreligion.  It  would  be  hard  to  show,  further,  who  are  the 
"forgotten  victims  "of  Balguy  and  the  rest.  Balgu}'  criticised 
Shaftesbury,  whose  name  Is  still  a  good  deal  better  known  than 
Balguy's.  The  main  line  of  deists  is  pretty  well  remembered. 
And  If  we  pair  off  Hume  against  Berkeley,  Hobbes  against 
Locke,  Middleton  (as  historical  critic)  against  Bentley,  Shaftes- 
bury against  Addison,  Mandeville  against  Swift,  Bolingbroke 
against  Butler,  Collins  against  Clarke,  Herbert  against  Lyttel- 
ton,  TIndal  against  Waterland,  and  Gibbon  against — shall  we 
say? — Warburton,  it  hardly  appears  that  the  overplus  of  merit 
goes  so  overwhelmingly  as  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  alleges,  even  If 
we  leave  Newton,  with  brain  unhinged,  standing  against 
Halley.  The  statement  that  the  deists  "are  but  a  ragged 
regiment,"  and  that  "  in  speculative  ability  most  of  them  were 
children  by  the  side  of  their  ablest  antagonists,"  Is  simply 
unintelligible  unless  the  names  of  all  the  ablest  deists  are  left 
out.  Locke,  be  it  remembered,  did  not  live  to  meet  the  main 
delstic  attack  on  Christianity  ;  and  Sir  Leslie  admits  the  weak- 
ness of  his  pro-Christian  performance. 

The  bases  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  verdict  may  be  tested  by 
his  remarks  that ' '  Collins,  a  respectable  country  gentleman,  showed 
considerable  acuteness  ;  Toland,  a  poor  denizen  of  Gnib  Street, 
and  TIndal,  a  Fellow  of  All  Souls,  made  a  certain  display  of 
learning,  and  succeeded  In  planting  some  effective  arguments." 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        151 

Elsewhere  (pp.  217-227)  Sir  Leslie  admits  that  Collins  had  the 
best  of  the  argument  against  his  "venerable"  opponents  on 
Prophecy ;  and  Professor  Huxley  credits  him  with  equal 
success  in  the  argument  with  Clarke.  The  work  of  Collins  on 
Human  Liberty,  praised  by  a  whole  series  of  students  and 
experts,  and  entirely  above  the  capacity  of  Bentley,  is  philo- 
sophically as  durable  as  any  portion  of  Locke,  who  made 
Collins  his  chosen  friend  and  trustee,  and  who  did  not  live  to 
meet  his  imti-Biblical  arguments.  Tindal,  who  had  also  won 
Locke's  high  praise  by  his  political  essays,  profoundly  influenced 
such  a  student  as  Laukhard  (Lechler,  p.  451).  And  Toland, 
whom  even  Mr.  Farrar  (Bampton  Lectures,  p.  179)  admitted 
to  possess  "  much  originality  and  learning,"  has  struck  Lange 
as  a  notable  thinker,  though  he  zvas  a  poor  man.  Leibnitz, 
who  answered  him,  praises  his  acuteness,  as  does  Pusey,  who 
further  admits  the  uncommon  ability  of  Morgan  and  Collins 
{Historical  Knqiiirv  into  German  Rationalism,  1828,  p.  12b). 
It  is  time  that  the  conventional  English  standards  in  these 
matters  should  be  rectified. 

The  unfortunate  effect  of  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  dictum  is  seen 
in  the  assertion  of  Professor  Hoffding  {Hist,  of  Modern  Philos. 
Eng-.  trans.  1900,  i,  403),  that  Sir  Leslie  "rightly  remarks  of 
the  English  deists  that  they  were  altogether  inferior  to  their 
adversaries";  and  further  (p.  405),  that  by  the  later  deists, 
"Collins,  Tindal,  Morgan,  etc.,  the  dispute  as  to  miracles 
was  carried  on  with  great  violence."  It  is  here  evident  that 
Professor  Hoffding  has  not  read  the  writers  he  depreciates,  for 
those  he  names  were  far  from  being  violent.  Had  he  known 
the  literature,  he  would  have  named  Woolston,  not  Collins  and 
Tindal  and  Morgan.  He  is  merely  echoing',  without  inquiring" 
for  himself,  a  judgment  which  he  regards  as  authoritative.  In 
the  same  passage  he  declares  that  "  only  one  of  all  the  men 
formerly  known  as  the  '  English  deists '  [Tolandj  has 
rendered  contributions  of  any  value  to  the  history  of  thought." 
If  this  is  said  with  a  knowledge  of  the  works  of  Collins,  Shaftes- 
bury, and  Middleton,  it  argues  a  sad  lack  of  critical  judgment. 
But  there  is  reason  to  infer  here  also  that  Professor  Hoffding 
writes  in  ignorance  of  the  literature  he  discusses. 

While  some  professed  rationalists  thus  belittle  a  series  of 
pioneers  who  did  so  much  to  make  later  rationalism  possible, 
some  eminent  theologians  do  them  justice.  Thus  does  Pro- 
fessor Cheyne  begin  his  series  of  lectures  on  Founders  of  Old 
Testament  Criticism  (1893):  "A  well-known  and  honoured 
representative  of  progressive  German  orthodoxy  (J.  A.  Dorner) 
has  set  a  fine  example  of  historical  candour  by  admitting  the 
obligations  of  his  country  to  a  much-disliked  form  of  English 


152        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

heterodoxy.  He  says  that  English  deism,  which  found  so 
many  apt  disciples  in  Germany,  '  by  clearing-  away  dead 
matter,  prepared  the  way  for  a  reconstruction  of  theology  from 
the  very  depths  of  the  heart's  beliefs,  and  also  subjected  man's 
nature  to  stricter  observation.''  This,  however,  as  it  appears 
to  me,  is  a  vefy  inadequate  description  of  the  facts.  It  was  not 
merely  a  new  constructive  stage  of  German  theoretic  theology, 
and  a  keener  psychological  investigation,  for  which  deism 
helped  to  prepare  the  way,  but  also  a  great  movement,  which 
has  in  our  own  day  become  in  a  strict  sense  international, 
concerned  with  the  literary  and  historical  criticism  of  the 
Scriptures.  Beyond  all  dDubt,  the  Biblical  discussions  which 
abound  in  the  works  of  the  deists  and  their  opponents  contri- 
buted in  no  slight  degree  to  the  development  of  that  semi- 
apologetic  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  of  which  J.  D. 
Michaelis,  and  in  some  degree  even  Eichhorn,  were  leading- 
representatives It  is  indeed  singular  that  deism  should  have 

passed  away  in  England  without  having  produced  a  great 
critical  movement  among  ourselves."  Not  quite  so  singular, 
perhaps,  when  we  note  that  in  our  own  day  Sir  Leslie  Stephen 
and  Professor  Hoft'ding  could  sum  up  the  work  of  the  deists 
without  a  glance  at  what  it  did  for  Biblical  criticism. 

If  we  were  to  set  up  a  theory  of  intellectual  possi- 
bilities from  what  has  actually  taken  place  in  the  history 
of  thought,  and  without  regard  to  the  economic  and 
political  conditions  above  mentioned,  we  might  reason 
that  deism  failed  permanently  to  overthrow  the  current 
creed  because  it  was  not  properly  preceded  by  discipline 
in  natural  science.  There  might  well  be  stagnation  in 
the  higher  criticism  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  when  all 
natural  science  was  still  coloured  by  them.  In  nothing, 
perhaps,  is  the  danger  of  Sacred  Books  more  fully 
exemplified  than  in  their  influence  for  the  suppression  of 
true  scientific  thought.  A  thousandfold  more  potently 
than  the  faiths  of  ancient  Greece  has  that  of  Christendom 
blocked  the  way  to  all  intellectually  vital  discovery.  If 
even  the  fame  and  the  pietism  of  Newton  could  not  save 
hirn  from  the  charge  of  promoting  atheism,  much  less 
could  obscure  men  hope  to  set  up  any  view  of  natural 

'  History  of  Protestant  Theology,  Eng.  trans,  ii,  77.  For  the  influence 
of  deism  on  Germany,  see  Tholiick  {Vertm'scJite  ScJiriften,  Bd.  ii)  and 
Lechler  {Gesch.  des  englischen  Deismus). — Ahte  by  Dr.  Cheyiie. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        153 

things  which  clashed  with  pulpit  prejudice.  But  the 
harm  lay  deeper,  inasmuch  as  the  ground  was  pre- 
occupied by  pseudo-scientific  theories  which  were  at  best 
fanciful  modifications  of  the  myths  of  Genesis.  Types 
of  these  performances  are  the  treatise  of  Sir  Matthew 
Hale  on  The  Primitive  Origination  of  Mankind  {\^'^^  ; 
Dr.  Thomas  Burnet's  Sacred  Theory  of  the  Earth  (1680- 
89)  ;  and  Whiston's  New  Theory  of  the  Earth  (1696) — 
all  devoid  of  scientific  value  ;  Hale's  work  being  pre- 
Newtonian  ;  Burnet's  anti-Newtonian,  though  partly 
critical  as  regards  the  sources  of  the  Pentateuch  ;  and 
Whiston's  a  combination  of  Newton  and  myth  with  his 
own  quaint  speculations.  Even  the  Natural  History  of 
the  Eartli  of  Professor  John  Woodward  (1695),  after 
recognising  that  fossils  were  really  prehistoric  remains, 
decided  that  they  were  deposited  by  the  Deluge.' 
Beyond  this,  science  made  little  advance  for  many 
years.  Moral  and  historical  criticism,  then,  as  regards 
some  main  issues,  had  gone  further  than  scientific  ;  and 
men's  thinking  on  certain  problems  of  cosmic  philo- 
sophy was  thus  arrested  for  lack  of  a  basis  in  expe- 
riential science.  But  the  true  reason  of  the  arrest  of 
exact  Biblical  criticism  in  the  eighteenth  century  is  that 
which  explains  also  the  arrest  of  the  sciences.  English 
energy,  broadly  speaking,  was  diverted  into  other 
channels.  In  the  age  of  Chatham  it  became  more  and 
more  military  and  industrial,  imperialist  and  commercial ; 
and  the  scientific  work  of  Newton  was  considerably  less 
developed  by  English  hands  than  was  the  critical  work 
of  the  first  deists.  Long  before  the  French  Revolution, 
mathematical  and  astronomical  science  were  being 
advanced  by  French  hands,  the  English  doing  nothing. 
Lagrange  and  Euler,  Clairaut  and  D'Alembert,  carried 
on  the  work,  till  Laplace  consummated  it  in  his  great 
theory,  which  is  to  Newton's  what  Newton's  was  to  that 
of  Copernicus.  It  was  Frenchmen,  freethinkers  to  a 
man,  who  built  up  the  new  astronomy,  while   England 

'  White,   Warfare  of  Science  ivith  Theology,  i,  227. 


154       BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

was  producing  only  eulogies  of  Newton's  greatness. 
"  No  British  name  is  ever  mentioned  in  the  list  of 
mathematicians  who  followed  Newton  in  his  brilliant 
career  and  completed  the  magnificent  edifice  of  which 
he  laid  the  foundation."'  "Scotland  contributed  her 
Maclaurin,  but  England  no  European  name."^ 
Throughout  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
"  there  was  hardly  an  individual  in  this  country  who 
possessed  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  methods  of 
investigation  which  had  conducted  the  foreign  mathe- 
maticians to  so  many  sublime  results."^  "  The  English 
mathematicians  seem  to  have  been  so  dazzled  with  the 
splendour  of  Newton's  discoveries  that  they  never 
conceived  them  capable  of  being  extended  or  improved 
upon  ";4  and  Newton's  name  was  all  the  while  vaunted, 
unwarrantably  enough,  as  being  on  the  side  of  Christian 
orthodoxy.  There  was  nothing  specially  incidental  to 
deism,  then,  in  the  non-development  of  the  higher 
criticism  in  England  after  Collins  and  Parvish,  or  in  the 
lull  of  critical  speculation  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
century.  It  was  part  of  a  general  social  readjustment 
in  which  English  attention  was  turned  from  the  mental 
life  to  the  physical,  from  intension  of  thought  to 
extension  of  empire. 

Playfair  (as  cited,  p.  39  ;  Brewster,  p.  348,  note)  puts  forward 
the  theory  that  the  progress  of  the  higher  science  in  France 
was  due  to  the  "  small  pensions  and  great  lionours  "  bestowed 
on  scientific  men  by  the  Academy  of  Sciences.  The  lack  of  such 
an  institution  in  England  he  traces  to  "  mercantile  prejudices," 
without  explaining  these  in  their  turn.  They  are  to  be  under- 
stood as  the  consequences  of  the  special  expansion  of  com- 
mercial and  industrial  life  in  England  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  France,  on  the  contrary,  losing  India  and  North 
America,  had  her  energies  in  a  proportional  degree  thrown 
back  on  the  life  of  the  mind.  French  freethought,  it  will  be 
observed,    expanded    with    science,    while   in    England    there 

'   Playfair,  in  the  Edinburgh  Revic7v,'^&x\wa.ry,  1808,  cited  by  Brewster, 
Memoirs  of  Ne7vton,  1855,  1,347. 
^  Brewster,  as  cited. 

3  Grant,  History  of  Physical  Astronoviv,  i8:;2,  p.  108. 
"  Baden  Powell,  Hist,  of  Nat.  Philos.  '1834,"  p.  363. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY       155 


occurred,  not  a  spontaneous  reversion  to  orthodoxy  any  more 
than  a  surrender  of  the  doctrine  of  Newton,  but  a  general 
turning-  of  attention  in  other  directions.  It  is  significant  that 
the  most  important  names  in  the  Hterature  of  deism  after  1740 
are  those  of  Hume  and  Smith,  late  products  of  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  pre-industrial  Scotland  ;  of  Bolingbroke,  an 
aristocrat  of  the  deistic  generation,  long  an  exile  in  France, 
who  left  his  works  to  be  published  after  his  death  ;  and  of 
Gibbon,  who  also  breathed  the  intellectual  air  of  France. 

/   ,  .  ' 

^ ^^.-  ^  3. 

It  is  commonly  assumed  that  after  Chubb  and  Morgan 
the  deistic  movement  in  England  "decayed,"  or  "jDassed 
into  skepticism  "  with  Hume  ;  and  that  the  decay  was 
mainly  owing  to  the  persuasive  effect  of  Bishop  Butler's 
Analogy  (1736).'  This  appears  to  be  a  complete  mis- 
conception, arising  out  of  the  habit  of  looking  to  the 
succession  of  books  without  considering  the  accom- 
panying social  conditions.  Butler's  book  had  very 
little  influence  till  long  after  his  death, ""  being  indeed 
very  ill-fitted  to  turn  contemporary  deists  to  Christianity. 
It  does  but  develop  one  form  of  the  skeptical  argument 
for  faith,  as  Berkeley  had  developed  another  ;  and  that 
form  of  reasoning  never  does  attain  to  anything  better 
than  a  success  of  despair.  The  main  argument  being 
that  natural  religion  is  open  to  the  same  objections  as 
revealed,  on  the  score  (i)  of  the  inconsistency  of  Nature 
with  divine  benevolence,  and  (2)  that  we  must  be  guided 
in  opinion  as  in  conduct  by  probability,  a  Mohammedan 
could  as  well  use  the  theorem  for  the  Koran  as  could  a 
Christian  for  the  Bible  ;  and  the  argument  against  the 
justice  of  Nature  tended  logically  to  atheism.  But  the 
deists  had  left  to  them  the  resource  of  our  modern  theists 
— that  of  surmising  a  beneficence  above  human  compre- 
hension ;  and  it  is  clear  that  if  Butler  made  anv  converts 
they  must  have  been  of  a  very  unenthusiastic  kind.  It 
is  therefore  safe  to  say  with  Pattison  that  "  To  whatever 

'  Sir  James  Stephen,  Hora  Sabbaticcc,  ii,  281  ;   Lechler,  p.  451. 
"  See  details  in  Dynamics  of  Religion,  ch.  viii. 


156       BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

causes  is  to  be  attributed  the  decline  of  deism  from  1750 
onwards,  the  books  polemically  written  against  it  cannot 
be  reckoned  among  them."' 

On  the  other  hand,  even  deists  who  were  affected  by 
the  plea  that  the  Bible  need  not  be  more  consistent  and 
satisfactory  than  Nature,  could  find  refuge  in  Unita- 
rianism,  a  creed  which,  as  industriously  propounded 
by  Priestley^  towards  the  end  of  the  century,  made  a 
numerical  progress  out  of  all  proportion  to  that  of 
orthodoxy.  The  argument  of  William  Law,^  again, 
which  insisted  on  the  irreconcilability  of  the  course  of 
things  with  human  reason,  and  called  for  an  abject  sub- 
mission to  revelation,  could  appeal  only  to  minds  already 
thus  prostrate.  Both  his  and  Butler's  methods,  in  fact, 
prepared  the  way  for  Hume.  And  in  the  year  1741, 
five  years  after  the  issue  of  the  Analogy,  and  seven 
before  the  issue  of  Hume's  Essay  on  Miracles,  we  find 
the  thesis  of  that  essay  tersely  affirmed  in  a  note  to 
Book  n  of  an  anonymous  translation  (ascribed  to  T. 
Francklin)  of  Cicero's  De  Natiira  Deoriun. 

The  passage  Is  worth  comparing  with  Hume  :  "  Hence  we 
see  what  httle  credit  ought  to  be  paid  to  facts  said  to  be  done 
out  of  tlie  ordinary  course  of  nature.  These  miracles  [cutting 
the  whetstone,  etc.,  told  by  Cicero,  De  Div.  i,  c.  xvii]  are  well 
attested.  They  were  recorded  In  the  annals  of  a  great  people, 
believed  by  many  learned  and  otherwise  sagacious  persons, 
and  received  as  religious  truths  by  the  populace ;  but  the 
testimonies  of  ancient  records,  the  credulity  of  some  learned 
men,  and  the  Implicit  faith  of  the  vulgar,  can  never  prove  that 


'  Essay  on  -'Tendencies  of  Relig-ious  Thougfht  in  Eng-land  :  1688- 
1750,"  in  Essays  and  Revie7vs,  9th  ed.  p.  304. 

=  In  criticising-  whom  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  barely  notices  his  scientific 
work,  but  dwells  much  on  his  relig-ious  fallacies,  a  course  which  would 
make  short  work  of  the  fame  of  Newton. 

'  In  his  Case  of  Reason  :  or,  N^afiiml  Religion  Fully  and  Fairly  Stated, 
in  answer  to  Tindal  (1732).  See  the  arg-ument  set  forth  by  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  i,  158-163.  It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  in  his  Spirit  of 
Prayer  (1750)  Part  II,  Dial,  i,  Law  expressly  arg-ues  that '•  No  other 
religfion  can  be  rig-ht  but  that  which  has  its  foundation  in  Nature.  For  ' 
the  God  of  Nature  can  require  nothing-  of  his  creatures  but  what  the 
state  of  their  nature  calls  them  to."  LiJce  Baxter,  Berkeley,  Butler,  and 
so  many  other  orthodox  polemists,  Law  uses  the  argfument  from  igno- 
rance when  it  suits  him,  and  ignores  or  rejects  it  when  used  by  others. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY       157 

to  have  been,  which  is  impossible  in  the  nature  of  thinjai's  ever 

to   be."     M.  Tullius  Cicero  Of  the  Nature  of  the  Gods with 

Notes,  London,  1741,  p.  85. 

What  Hume  did  was  to  elaborate  the  skeptical  argument 
with  a  power  and  fulness  which  forced  attention  once 
for  all,  alike  in  England  and  on  the  Continent.  It  is 
not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that  Hume's  philosophy, 
in  so  far  as  it  was  strictly  skeptical — that  is,  suspensory 
— drew  away  deists  from  their  former  attitude  of  con- 
fidence to  one  of  absolute  doubt.  Nor  did  Hume  ever 
aim  at  such  a  result.  What  he  did  was  to  countermine 
the  mines  of  Berkeley  and  others,  who,  finding  their 
supra-rational  dogmas  set  aside  by  rationalism,  deistic 
or  atheistic,  sought  to  discredit  at  once  deistic  and 
atheistic  philosophies  based  on  study  of  the  external 
world,  and  to  establish  their  creed  anew  on  the  basis  of 
their  subjective  consciousness."  As  against  that  method, 
Hume  showed  the  futility  of  all  apriorism  alike,  destroy- 
ing the  sham  skepticism  of  the  Christian  theists  by 
forcing  their  method  to  its  conclusions  ;  but,  knowing 
that  strict  skepticism  is  practically  null  in  life,  he  counted 
on  leaving  the  ground  cleared  for  experiential  rational- 
ism. And  he  did,  in  so  far  as  he  was  read.  His  essay, 
Of  Miracles  (with  the  rest  of  the  Inquiries  of  1748-51, 
which  recast  his  early  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  1739), 
posits  a  principle  valid  against  all  supernaturalism 
whatever  ;  while  his  Natural  History  of  Religion  (1757), 
though  affirming  deism,  rejected  the  theory  of  a  primor- 
dial monotheism,  and  laid  the  basis  of  the  science  of 
Comparative  Hierology.'  Finally,  his  posthumous 
Dialogues  Concerning  Natural  Religion  (1779)  admit, 
though  indirectly,  the  untenableness  of  deism,  and  fall 
back  decisively  upon  the  atheistic  or  agnostic  position. 
Like  Descartes,  he  lacked  the  heroic  fibre  ;  but  like  him 


'  The  general  reader  should  take  note  that  in  A.  Murray's  issue  of 
Hume's  Essays  (now  or  lately  published  by  Ward,  Lock,  &  Co.),  which 
omits  altogether  the  essays  on  Miracles  and  a  Future  State,  the  Natural 
History  of  Religion  is  much  mutilated,  though  the  book  professes  to  be  a 
verbatim  reprint. 


1 58       BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSfh  CENTURY 

he  recast  philosophy  for  modern  Europe  ;  and  its 
subsequent  course  is  but  a  development  of  or  a  reaction 
against  his  work. 

§4- 
It  is  remarkable  that  this  development  of  opinion  took 
place  in  that  part  of  the  British  Islands  where  religious 
fanaticism  had  gone  furthest,  and  speech  and  thought 
were  socially  least  free.  Freethought  in  Scotland  before 
the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  can  have  existed 
only  as  a  thing  furtive  and  accursed  ;  and  though,  as 
we  have  seen  from  the  Religio  Stoici  of  Sir  George 
Mackenzie,  unbelief  had  emerged  in  some  abundance 
at  or  before  the  Restoration,  only  wealthy  men  could 
dare  openly  to  avow  their  deism.'  In  1697  the  clergy 
had  actually  succeeded  in  getting  a  lad  of  eighteen, 
Thomas  Aikenhead,  hanged  for  professing  deism  in 
general,  and  in  particular  for  calling  the  Old  Testament 
"  Ezra's  Fables,"  and  denying  the  divinity  of  Jesus, 
though  he  broke  down  and  pleaded  penitence.^  At  this 
date  the  clergy  were  hounding  on  the  Privy  Council  to 
new  activity  in  trying  witches ;  and  all  works  of  supposed 
heretical  tendency  imported  from  England  were  confis- 
cated in  the  Edinburgh  shops,  among  them  being 
Thomas  Burnet's  Sacred  Tlieoiy  of  the  Earth.-'  Scottish 
intellectual  development  had  in  fact  been  arrested  by  the 
Reformation,  so  that,  save  for  NapiQr's  Logarithms  (1614) 
and  such  a  political  treatise  as  Rutherford's  Lex  Rex 
(1644),  the  nation  of  Dunbar  and  Lyndsay  produced  for 
two  centuries  no  secular  literature  of  the  least  value, 
and  not  even  a  theology  of  any  enduring  interest. 
Deism,  accordingly,  seems  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
seventeenth  and  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century 

'  See  Burton,  Hist,  of  Scotland,  viii,  549-50,  as  to  the  case  of 
Pitcairne. 

-  Macaulay,  History,  c\\.  xxii  ;  student's  ed.  ii.  620-1  ;  Burton,  History 
of  Scotland,  viii,  76-77.  Aikenhead  seems  to  have  been  a  boy  of  unusual 
capacity,  ev'en  by  the  bullying  account  of  Macaulay.  See  his  arguments 
on  the  bases  of  ethics,  set  forth  in  his  ■'  dying  speech,"  as  cited  by 
Halyburton,  Natural  Religion  Insufficient,  1714,  pp.  119-123,  131. 

■3  Macaulav,  as  cited. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY       159 

to  have  made  fully  as  much  progress  in  Scotland  as 
in  England  ;  and  the  bigoted  clergy  could  offer  little 
intellectual  resistance. 

As  early  as  1696  the  Scottish  Parliament  passed  an  Act 
"ag^ainst  the  Atheistical  opinions  of  the  Deists."  (Macaulay, 
ch.  xxii  ;  Cunningham,  Hist,  of  the  Ch.  of  Scotland,  il,  313.) 
Sir  W.  Anstruther  (a  judge  In  the  Court  of  Session),  in  the 
preface  to  his  Essays  Moral  and  Divine,  Edinburgh,  1710, 
speaks  of  "  the  spreading  contagion  oi  atheism,  whicli  threatens 
the  ruin  of  our  excellent  and  hoi}-  religion."  To  atheism  he 
devotes  two  essays  ;  and  neither  in  these  nor  in  one  on  the 
Incarnation  does  he  discuss  deism,  the  arguments  he  handles 
being  really  atheistic.  Scottish  freethought  seems  thus  to  have 
gone  further  than  English  at  the  period  in  question.  i\s  to  the 
prevalence  of  deism,  however,  see  the  posthumous  work  of 
Professor  Halyburton,  of  St.  Andrews,  Natural  Religion  htsnffi- 
^:iV«/ (Edinburgh,  1714),  Epist.  of  Recom.;  pref.  pp.  25,  27,  and 
pp.  8,  15,  19,  2^,  31,  etc.  Halyburton's  treatise  Is  interesting 
as  showing  the  psychological  state  of  argumentative  Scotch 
orthodoxy  in  his  day.  He  professes  to  repel  the  deistical 
argument  throughout  by  reason  ;  he  follows  Huet  and  concurs 
with  Berkelev  In  contending  that  mathematics  Involves  antl- 
ratlonal  assumptions  ;  and  he  takes  entire  satisfaction  in  the 
execution  of  the  lad  Aikenhead  for  deism.  Yet  In  a  second 
treatise.  An  Essay  Concerning  the  Nature  of  Faith,  he  contends, 
as  against  Locke  and  the  "  Rationalists,"  that  the  power  to 
believe  In  the  word  of  God  is  "expressly  deny'd  to  man  In  his 
natural  estiite,"  and  is  a  supernatural  gift.  Thus  the  Calvlnlsts, 
like  Baxter,  were  at  bottoin  absolutely  Insincere  In  their  pro- 
fession to  act  upon  reason,  while  insolently  charging  insincerity 
on  others. 

Even  apart  from  deism  there  had  arisen  a  widespread 
aversion  to  dogmatic  theology  and  formal  creeds,  so  that 
an  apologist  of  17 15  speaks  of  his  day  as  "a  time  when 
creeds  and  Confessions  of  Faith  are  so  generally  decried, 
and  not  only  exposed  to  contempt,  as  useless  inventions 

but  are  loaded  by  many  writers  of  distinguished  wit 

and  learning  with  the  most  fatal  and  dangerous  con- 
sequences."'    This  writer  admits  the  intense  bitterness 

'  A  Full  Account  of  the  Several  Ends  and  Uses  of  Confessions  of  Faith, 
first  published  in  1719  as  a  preface  to  a  Collection  of  Confessions  of 
Faith,  by  Professor  W.  Dunbar,  of  Edinburgh  University,  3rd  ed.  1775, 
p.  1.        ' 


i6o       BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

of  the  theological  disputes  of  the  time  ;'  and  he  speaks, 
on  the  other  hand,  of  seeing  "  the  most  sacred  mysteries 
of  godliness  impudently  denied  and  impugned  "  by 
some,  while  the  "  distinguishing  doctrines  of  Chris- 
tianity are  by  others  treacherously  undermined,  sub- 
tilised into  an  airy  phantom,  or  at  least  doubted,  if  not 
disclaimed."-  His  references  are  probably  to  works 
published  in  England,  notably  those  of  Locke,  Toland, 
Shaftesbury,  and  Collins,  since  in  Scotland  no  such 
literature  could  be  published  ;  but  he  doubtless  has  an 
eye  to  Scottish  opinion. 

While,  however,  the  rationalism  of  the  time  could  not 
take  book  form,  there  are  clear  traces  of  its  existence 
among  educated  men,  even  apart  from  the  general  com- 
plaints of  the  apologists.  Thus  the  Professor  of  Medicine 
at  Glasgow  University  in  the  opening  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  John  Johnston,  was  a  known  free- 
thinker.3  In  the  way  of  moderate  or  Christian  rationalism, 
the  teaching  of  the  prosecuted  Simson  seems  to  have 
counted  for  something,  seeing  that  Francis  Hutcheson 
at  least  imbibed  from  him  "  liberal  "  views  about  future 
punishment  and  the  salvation  of  the  heathen,  which  gave 
much  offence  in  the  Presbyterian  pulpit  in  Ulster. '^  And 
Hutcheson's  later  vindication  of  the  ethical  system  of 
Shaftesbury  in  his  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Ideas  of 
Beauty  and  Virtue  (1725)  must  have  tended  to  attract 
attention  in  Scotland  to  the  Cliaracteristics  after  his 
instalment  as  a  Professor  at  Glasgow.  In  an  English 
pamphlet,  in  1732,  he  was  satirised  as  introducing 
Shaftesbury's  system  into  a  University, ^  and  it  is  from 
the  Shaftesbury  camp  that  the  first  literary  expression 
of  freethought  in  Scotland  was  sent  forth.  A  young 
Scotch  deist  of  that  school,  William  Dudgeon,  published 

'  Work  cited,  p.  48.  ^  Id.  p.  198. 

3  Scotland  and  Scotsmen  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  From  the  MSS. 
of  John  Ramsay,  of  Ochtertyre,  1888,  i,  277.  Ramsay  describes  Johnston 
as  a  "joyous,  manly,  honourable  man,"  of  whom  Kames  "  was  exceed- 
ingly fond  "  (p.  278). 

■*  W.  R.  Scott,  Francis  Hutcheson,  1900,  pp.  15,  20-21, 

s  Id.  p.  52. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY       i6i 

in  1732  a  dialogue  entitled  The  State  of  the  Moral 
World  Considered,  wherein  the  optimistic  position  was 
taken  up  with  uncommon  explicitness  ;  and  in  1739  the 
same  writer  printed  A  Catechism  Founded  upon  Expe- 
rience and  Reason,  prefaced  by  an  Introductory  Letter 
on  Natural  Religion,  which  takes  a  distinctly  anti-clerical 
attitude.  The  Catechism  answers  to  its  title,  save  in  so  far 
as  it  is  a  priori  in  its  theism  and  optimistic  in  its  ethic, 
as  is  another  work  of  its  author  in  the  same  year,  A 
View  of  the  Necessarian  or  Best  Scheme^  defending  the 
Shaftesburyan  doctrine  against  the  criticism  of  Crousaz 
on  Pope's  Essay.  Still  more  heterodox  is  his  little 
volume  of  Philosophical  Letters  Concerning  the  Being 
and  Attributes  of  God  (1737),  where  the  doctrine  goes 
far  towards  pantheism.  All  this  propaganda  seems  to 
have  elicited  only  one  printed  reply — an  attack  on  his 
first  treatise  in  1732.  In  the  letter  prefaced  to  his 
Catechism,  however,  he  tells  that  "the  bare  suspicion  of 
my  not  believing  the  opinions  in  fashion  in  our  country 
hath  already  caused  me  sufficient  trouble."'  His  case 
had  in  fact  been  raised  in  the  church  courts,  the  pro- 
ceedings going  through  many  stages  in  the  years  1732-6  ; 
but  in  the  end  no  decision  was  taken, ^  and  the  special 
stress  of  his  rationalism  in  1739  doubtless  owes  some- 
thing alike  to  the  prosecution  and  to  its  collapse. 
Despite  such  hostility,  he  must  privately  have  had  fair 
support.3 

The  prosecution  of  Hutcheson  before  the  Glasgow 
Presbytery  in  1738  reveals  vividly  the  theological  temper 
of  the  time.  He  was  indicted  for  teaching  to  his 
students  "  the  following  two  false  and  dangerous 
doctrines  :  first,  that  the  standard  of  moral  goodness 
was   the  promotion  of  the   happiness  of  others  ;    and, 

'  Cp.  Albert! ,  Brief e  hetreffend  den  Zustand  der  Religion  in  Gross- 
Brittannien,  1752,  pp.  430-1. 

-  See  Dr.  McCosh's  Scottish  Philosophy,  1875,  pp.  1 1  i-i  13.  Dr.  McCosh 
notes  that  at  some  points  Dudgeon  anticipated  Hume. 

3  Dr.  JMcCosh,  however,  admits  that  the  absence  of  the  printer's 
name  on  the  1765  edition  of  Dudgeon's  works  shows  that  there  was  then 
no  thoroug-h  freedom  of  thought  in  Scotland. 

VOL.   II  M 


1 62        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iStli  CENTURY 

second,  that  we  could  have  a  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil  without  and  prior  to  a  knowledge  of  God."'  There 
has  been  a  natural  disposition  on  the  orthodox  side  to 
suppress  the  fact  that  such  teachings  were  ever  ecclesias- 
tically denounced  as  false,  dangerous,  and  irreligious; 
and  the  prosecution  seems  to  have  had  no  effect  beyond 
intensifying  the  devotion  of  Hutcheson's  students, 
among  whom  was  Adam  Smith.  Another  prosecution 
soon  afterwards  showed  that  the  new  influences  were 
vitally  affecting  thought  within  the  church  itself. 
Hutcheson's  friend  Leechman,  whom  he  and  his  party 
contrived  to  elect  as  professor  of  theology  in  Glasgow 
University,  was  in  turn  prosecuted  (1743-4)  for  a 
published  sermon  on  Prayer,  which  Hutcheson  and  his 
sympathisers  pronounced  "  noble,"'  but  which  "  resolved 
the  efficacy  of  prayer  into  its  reflex  influence  on  the 
mind  of  the  worshipper  "^ — a  theorem  which  has  chroni- 
cally made  its  appearance  in  the  Scottish  church  ever 
since,  still  ranking  as  a  heresy,  after  having  brought  a 
clerical  prosecution  in  the  last  generation  on  at  least 
one  divine.  Professor  William  Knight,  and  rousing  a 
scandal  against  another,  the  late  Dr.  Robert  Wallace.^ 

Leechman  in  turn  held  his  ground,  and  later  became 
Principal  of  his  University  ;  but  still  the  orthodox  in 
Scotland  fought  bitterly  against  every  semblance  of 
rationalism.  Even  the  anti-deistic  essays  of  Lord- 
President  Forbes  of  Culloden,  head  of  the  Court  of 
Session,  when  collected  and  published  after  his  death  in 
1747,  were  offensive  to  the  church  as  laying  undue 
stress  on  reason  ;  as  accepting  the  heterodox  Biblical 
theories  of  Dr.  John  Hutchinson  ;  and  as  making  the 
awkward  admission  that  "  the  freethinkers,  with  all  their 

'  Rae,  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  1895,  p.  13.  Professor  Fowler  shows  no 
knowledge  of  this  prosecution  in  his  monogfraph  on  Hutcheson 
(Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson,  1882)  ;  and  Mr.  W.  R.  Scott,  in  his,  seems 
to  rely  for  the  wording  of  the  indictment  solely  on  Mr.  Rae,  who  gives 
no  references. 

^  Scott,  as  cited,  p.  87. 

3  Dr.  James  Orr,  David  Hume  and  his  Influence  on  Philosophy  and 
Theology,  1903,  pp.  36-37. 

''  Also  for  a  time  a  theological  professor  in  Edinburgh  University. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        163 


perversity,  generally  are  sensible  of  the  social  duties, 
and  act  up  to  them  better  than  others  do  who  in  other 
respects  think  more  justly  than  they."'  Such  an 
utterance  from  such  a  dignitary  told  of  a  profound 
change  ;  and,  largely  through  the  influence  of 
Hutcheson  and  Leechman  on  a  generation  of  students, 
the  educated  Scotland  of  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  in  large  part  either  "  Moderate"  or  deistic. 
After  generations  of  barren  controversy,^  the  very  aridity 
of  the  Presbyterian  life  intensified  the  recoil  among  the 
educated  classes  to  philosophical  and  historical  interests, 
leading  to  the  performances  of  Hume,  Smith,  Robertson, 
Millar,  Ferguson,  and  yet  others,  all  rationalists  in 
method  and  sociologists  in  their  interests. 

Of  these,  Millar  was  known  to  be  skeptical  in  a  high 
degree  ;3  while  Smith  and  Ferguson  were  certainly 
deists,  as  was  Henry  Home  (the  judge.  Lord  Kames), 
who  had  the  distinction  of  being  attacked  along  with  his 
friend  Hume  in  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland  in  1755-56.  Home  wrote  expressly  to  con- 
trovert Hume,  alike  as  to  utilitarianism  and  the  idea 
of  causation  ;  but  his  book,  Essays  on  Morality  and 
Natural  Religion  (published  anonymously,  i750» 
handled  the  thorny  question  of  freewill  in  such  fashion 
as  to  efive  no  less  offence  than  Hume  had  done  ;  and 
the  orthodox  bracketed  him  with  the  subject  of  his 
criticism.  His  doctrine  was  indeed  singular,  its 
purport  being  that  there  can  be  no  freewill,  but  that  the 
deity  has  for  wise  purposes  implanted  in  men  the 
feeling  that  their  wills  are  free.  The  fact  of  his  having 
been  made  a  judge  of  the  Court  of  Session  since  writing 
his  book  had  probably  something  to  do  with  the 
rejection  of  the  whole  subject  by  the  General  Assembly, 


'  Reflections  on  Incredulity,  in  Works,  I747>  ">  i4i~2. 

-  As  to  which  see  A  Sober  Enquiry  into  the  Grounds  of  the  Present 
Differences  in  the  Church  of  Scotland,  1723. 

3  See  the  Autobiograpliy  of  tlie  Rev.  Dr.  A.  Carlyle,  i860,  pp.  492-3. 
Millar's  Historical  Vieiv  of  the  English  Govenunoit  (censured  by  Hallam) 
was  once  much  esteemed  ;  and  his  Origin  of  Ranks  is  still  worth  the 
attention  of  sociologists. 


1 64        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

and  afterwards  by  the  Edinburgh  Presbytery  ;  but  there 
had  evidently  arisen  a  certain  diffidence  in  the  church, 
which  would  be  assiduously  promoted  by  "  moderates  " 
such  as  Principal  Robertson,  the  historian.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  while  Home  and  Hume  thus  escaped,  the 
other  Home,  John,  who  wrote  the  then  admired  tragedy 
of  Douglas,  was  soon  after  forced  to  resign  his  position 
as  a  minister  of  the  church  for  that  authorship,  deism 
having  apparently  more  friends  in  the  fold  than  drama.' 
While  the  theatre  was  thus  being  treated  as  a  place  of 
sin,  many  of  the  churches  in  Scotland  were  the  scenes 
of  repeated  Sunday  riots.  A  new  manner  of  psalm- 
singing  had  been  introduced,  and  it  frequently  happened 
that  the  congregations  divided  into  two  parties,  each 
singing  in  its  own  way,  till  they  came  to  blows. 
According  to  one  of  Hume's  biographers,  unbelievers 
were  at  this  period  wont  to  go  to  church  to  see  the  fun.^ 
Naturally  orthodoxy  did  not  gain  ground. 

In  Ireland,  at  least  in  Dublin,  during  the  earlier  part 
of  the  century,  there  occurred,  on  a  smaller  scale,  a 
similar  movement  of  rationalism,  also  largely  associated 
with  Shaftesbury.  In  Dublin  towards  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century  we  have  seen  Molyneux,  the  friend 
and  correspondent  of  Locke,  interested  in  "freethought," 
albeit  much  scared  by  the  imprudence  of  Toland.  In 
the  next  generation  we  find  in  the  same  city  a  coterie  of 
Shaftesburyans,  centring  around  Lord  Molesworth,  the 
friend  of  Hutcheson,  a  man  of  affairs  devoted  to  intel- 
lectual interests.  It  was  within  a  few  years  of  his 
meeting  Molesworth  that  Hutcheson  produced  his 
Inquiry,  championing  Shaftesbury's  ideas  ;3  and  other 
literary  men  were  similarly  influenced.  It  is  even 
suggested  that  Hutcheson's  clerical  friend  Synge,  whom 
we  have  seen'*  in  17 13  attempting  a  ratiocinative  answer 

'  Ritchie's  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  David  Hume,  1807, 
pp.  52-81  ;  Tytler's  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Lord  Karnes, 
2nd  ed.  1814,  vol.  i,  ch.  5;  Burton's  Life  of  David  Hume,  1846,  i,  425- 
430.  ^  Ritchie,  as  cited,  p.  57. 

3  W.  R.  Scott,  Francis  Hutcheson,  p.  31. 

•*  Above,  p.  134,  note. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        165 

to  the  unbelief  he  declared  to  be  abundant  around  him, 
was  not  only  influenced  by  Shaftesbury  through  Moles- 
worth,  but  latterly  "  avoided  publication  lest  his  opinions 
should  prejudice  his  career  in  the  Church."'  After  the 
death  of  Molesworth,  in  1725,  the  movement  he  set  up 
seems  to  have  languished  ;-  but,  as  we  have  seen,  there 
were  among  the  Irish  bishops  men  given  to  philosophic 
controversy,  and  the  influence  of  Berkeley  cannot  have 
been  wholly  obscurantist.  When  in  1756  we  read 
of  the  Arian  Bishop  Clayton-^  proposing  in  the  Irish 
House  of  Lords  to  drop  the  Nicene  and  Athanasian 
creeds,  we  realise  that  in  Ireland  thought  was  far  from 
stagnant.  The  heretic  bishop,  however,  died  (February, 
1758)  just  as  he  was  about  to  be  prosecuted  for  the 
heresies  of  his  Vindication  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
vients  (2nd  ed.  1757)  ;  and  thenceforth  Ireland  plays  no 
noticeable  part  in  the  development  of  rationalism, 
political  interests  soon  taking  the  place  of  religious, 
with  the  result  that  orthodoxy  recovered  its  ground. 


8  5- 

In  England,  meanwhile,  there  was  beginning  a 
redistribution  of  energies  which  can  be  seen  to  have 
prepared  for  the  intellectual  and  political  reaction  of  the 
end  of  the  century.     There  had  been  no  such  victory  of 

'  Scott,  pp.  2S-29,  35-36.  The  suggestion  is  not  quite  convincing-. 
Synge,  after  becoming  xXrchbishop  of  Tuam,  continued  to  publish  his 
propagandist  tracts,  among  them  A  n  Essay  towards  Making  the  Knowledge 
of  Religion  Easy  to  the  Meanest  Capacity  (Gih  ed.  1734),  which  is  quite 
orthodox,  and  which  argues  (p.  3)  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  to 
be  believed  and  not  pried  into,  "  because  it  is  above  our  understanding 
to    comprehend."     All    the  while  there   was  being  sold    also   his    early 

treatise,  "^  Gentleman's  Religion  :  in  Three  Parts with  an  Appendix, 

wherein  it  is  proved  that  nothing  contrary  to  our  Reason  can  possibly 
be  the  object  of  our  belief,  but  that  it  is  no  just  exception  against  some 
of  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  that  they  are  above  our  reason." 

-  Scott,  p.  36. 

3  All  that  is  told  of  this  prelate  by  Mr.  l^ecViy  (Hist,  of  Ireland  in  the 
i8th  Cent.  1892,  i,  207)  is  that  at  Killala  he  patronised  horse-races.  He 
was  industrious  on  more  episcopal  lines.  He  wrote  an  Introduction  to 
the  History  of  the  Jews  ;  a  V^indication  of  Biblical  Chronology  ;  two 
treatises  on  prophecy;  an  "Essay  on  Spirit"  (1751),  which  aroused 
much  controversy;  two  volumes  in  answer  to  Bolingbroke  (1752-54), 
which  led  to  his  being  prosecuted  ;  and  other  works. 


1 66        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

faith  as  is  supposed  to  have  been  wrought  by  the  forensic 
theorem  of  Butler.  An  orthodox  German  observer, 
making-  a  close  inquest  about  1750,  cites  the  British 
Magazine  as  stating  in  1749  that  half  the  educated 
people  were  then  deists  ;  and  he,  after  full  inquiry, 
agrees.'  In  the  same  year,  Richardson  speaks  tragically 
in  the  Postscriptum  to  Clarissa  Harlowe  of  seeing 
"  skepticism  and  infidelity  openly  avowed  and  even 
endeavoured  to  be  propagated  from  the  press  ;  the  great 
doctrines  of  the  gospel  brought  into  question  ;"  and  he 
describes  himself  as  "seeking  to  steal  in  with  a  dis- 
guised plea  for  religion."  Instead  of  being  destroyed 
by  the  clerical  defence,  the  deistic  movement  had  really 
penetrated  the  church,  which  was  become  as  rationalistic 
in  its  methods  as  its  function  would  permit,  and  the 
educated  classes,  which  had  arrived  at  a  state  of  com- 
promise. The  academic  Conyers  Middleton,  whose 
Letter  from  Rome  had  told  so  heavily  against  Chris- 
tianity in  exposing  the  pagan  derivations  of  much  of 
Catholicism,  had  further  damaged  the  doctrine  of  inspi- 
ration in  his  anonymous  Letter  to  Dr.  Waterland  (1731), 
while  professing  to  refute  Tindal  ;  and  in  his  famous 
Free  Lnquiry  into  the  miracles  of  post-apostolic  Chris- 
tianity (1749),  again  professing  to  strike  at  Rome,  he 
had  laid  the  foundations  of  a  new  structure  of  compara- 
tive criticism,  and  had  given  fresh  grounds  for  rejecting 
the  miracles  of  the  sacred  books.  In  short,  the  deistic 
movement  had  done  what  it  lay  in  it  to  do.  The  old 
evangelical  or  pietistic  view  of  life  was  discredited  among 
instructed  people,  and  in  this  sense  it  was  Christianity 
that  had  "decayed." 

Thus  Skelton  writes  in  1751  that  "  our  modern  apolog-ists  for 
Christianlty  often  defend  it  on  deistical  principles  "  {Deism 
Revealed,  pref.  p.  xii).  Cp.  vol.  ii,  pp.  234,  237.  Also  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen  as  cited  above,  p.  129,  note ;  and  Gostwick,  German 
Culture  and  Christianity ,  1882,  pp.  33-36. 

An  interesting  instance  of  liberalising  orthodoxy  is  furnished 

'   Dr.  G.    W.  Alberti,  Briefe  betreffende   den  Zustand  der  Religion   in 
Gross-Brittannien,  Hannover,  1752,  p.  440. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        167 


by  the  Rev.  Arthur  Ashley  Sykes,  who  contributed  many  volumes 
to  the  general  deistic  discussion,  some  of  them  anonymously. 
In  the  preface  to  \\\s  Essay  on  the  Truth  of  the  Christian  Religion 

(1732  ;  2nd  cd.  enlari^ed,  1755)  Sykes  remarks  that  "since 

systematical  opinions  have  been  received  and  embraced  in  such 
a  manner  that  it  has  not  been  safe  to  contradict  them,  the 
burden  of  vindicating  Christianity  has  been  very  much  increased. 
Its  friends  have  been  much  embarrassed  through  fear  of  speak- 
ing against  local  truths ;  and  its  adversaries  have  so  successfully 
attacked  those  weaknesses  that  Christianity  itself  has  been 
deemed  indefensible,  when  in  reality  the  follies  of  Christians 
alone  have  been  so."  Were  Christians  left  to  the  simple 
doctrines  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles,  he  contends,  Infidelity 
could  niake  no  converts.  And  at  the  close  of  the  book  he 
writes  :   "  Would  to  God  that  Christians  would  be  content  with 

the  plainness  and  simplicity  of  the  gospel That  they  would 

not  vend  under  the  name  of  evangelical  truth  the  absurd  and 
contradictory  schemes  of  ignorant  or  wicked  men  !  That  they 
would  part  with  that  load  of  rubbish  which  makes  thinking 
men  almost  sink  under  the  weight,  and  gives  too  great  a  handle 
for  Infidelity  !"  Such  writing  could  not  give  satisfaction  to  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities  ;  and  as  little  could  Sykes's  remarkable 
admission  (The  Principles  and  Connection  of  Nattiral  and 
Revealed  Religion,  1740,  p.  242):  "When  the  advantages  of 
revelation  are  to  be  specified,  I  cannot  conceive  that  it  should 
be  maintained  as  necessary  to  fix  a  rule  of  morality.  For  what 
one  principle  of  morality  is  there  which  the  heathen  moralists 
had  not  asserted  or  maintained  ?  Before  ever  any  revelation  is 
offered  to  mankind  they  are  supposed  to  be  so  well  acquainted 
with  moral  truths  as  from  them  to  judge  of  the  truth  of  the 
revelation  itself."     Again  he  writes  : — 

"  Nor  can  revelation  be  necessary  to  ascertain  religion.  For 
religion  consisting  in  nothing  but  doing  our  duties  from  a  sense 
of  the  being  of  God,  revelation  is  not  necessary  to  this  end, 
unless  it  be  said  that  we  cannot  know  that  there  is  a  God,  and 
what  our  duties  are,  without  it.     Reason  will  teach  us  that  there 

is  a   God that   we    are    to    be   just   and   charitable    to    our 

neighbours  ;  that  we  are  to  be  temperate  and  sober  in  our- 
selves "  {Id.  p.  244). 

This  is  simple  Shaftesburyan  deism,  and  all  that  the  apolo- 
gist goes  on  to  contend  for  is  that  revelation  "contains  motives 
and  reaso7is  for  the  practice  of  what  is  right,  more  and  different 
from  what  natural  reason  without  this  help  can  suggest."  He 
seems,  however,  to  have  believed  In  miracles,  though  an  anony- 
mous Essay  on  the  Nature,  Design,  and  Origin  of  Sacrifices 
(1748),  which  is  ascribed  to  him    quietly  undermines  the  whole 


1 68        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 

evangelical  doctrine.      Throughout,  he   is  remarkable   for  the 
amenity  of  his  tone  towards  "  infidels." 

The  next  intellectual  step  in  natural  course  would 
have  been  a  revision  of  the  deistic  assumptions,  in  so  far, 
that  is,  as  certain  positive  assumptions  were  common  to 
the  deists.  But,  as  we  have  seen,  certain  fresh  issues 
were  raised  as  among  the  deists  themselves.  In  addition 
to  those  above  noted,  there  was  the  profoundly  important 
one  as  to  ethics.  Shaftesbury,  who  rejected  the  religious 
basis,  held  a  creed  of  optimism  ;  and  this  optimism  was 
assailed  by  Mandeville,  who  in  consequence  was  opposed 
as  warmly  by  the  deist  Hutcheson  and  others  as  by  Law 
and  Berkeley.  To  grapple  with  this  problem,  and  with 
the  underlying  cosmic  problem,  there  was  needed  at 
least  as  much  general  mental  activity  as  went  to  the 
antecedent  discussion  ;  and  the  main  activity  of  the 
nation  was  now  being  otherwise  directed.  The  negative 
process,  the  impeachment  of  Christian  supernaturalism, 
had  been  accomplished  so  far  as  the  current  arguments 
went.  Toland  and  Collins  had  fought  the  battle  of  free 
discussion,  forcing  ratiocination  on  the  church  ;  Collins 
had  shaken  the  creed  of  prophecy  ;  Shaftesbury  had 
impugned  the  religious  conception  of  morals  ;  and 
Mandeville  had  done  so  more  profoundly,  laying  the 
foundations  of  scientific  utilitarianism.'  So  effective 
had  been  the  utilitarian  propaganda  in  general  that  the 
orthodox  Brown  (author  of  the  once  famous  Estimate 
of  the  life  of  his  countrymen),  in  his  criticism  of  Shaftes- 
bury (1751),  wrote  as  a  pure  utilitarian  against  an 
inconsistent  one,  and  defended  Christianity  on  strictly 
utilitarian  lines.  Woolston,  following  up  Collins,  had 
shaken  the  faith  in  New  Testament  miracles  ;  Middleton 
had  done  it  afresh  with  all  the  decorum  that  Woolston 
lacked  ;  and  Hume  had  laid  down  with  masterly  clear- 
ness the  philosophic  principle  which  rebuts  all  attempts 
to   prove  miracles  as  such.^     Tindal    had   clinched  the 

'  Cp.  essay'on  The  Fable  of  the  Bees  in  the  author's  Essays  fo7vards  a 
Critical  Method,  1889. 

^  As  against  the  objections  of  Mr.  Lang-,  see  the  author's  paper  in 
Studies  in  Religious  Fallacy. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  iSlh  CENTURY        169 

case  for  "  natural  "  theism  as  against  revelationism  ; 
and  the  later  deists,  notably  Morgan,  had  to  some 
extent  combined  these  results.'  This  literature  was 
generally  distributed  ;  and  so  far  the  case  had  been 
thrashed  out. 

To  carry  intellectual  progress  much  further  there  was 
needed  a  general  movement  of  scientific  study  and  a 
reform  in  education.  The  translation  of  La  Mettrie's 
Man  a  Machine  (1750)  found  a  public  no  better  prepared 
for  the  problems  he  raised  than  that  addressed  by  Strutt 
eighteen  years  before  ;  and  his  reply  to  himself,  Alan 
More  than  a  Machine,  of  which  the  translator  (1752) 
declared  in  his  preface  that  "  religion  and  infidelity  over- 
spread the  land,"  probably  satisfied  what  appetite  there 
was  for  such  a  discussion.  There  had  begun  a  change 
in  the  prevailing  mental  life,  a  diversion  of  interest  from 
ideas  as  such  to  political  and  mercantile  interests.  The 
middle  and  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  the 
period  of  the  rise  of  (i)  the  new  machine  industries,  and 
(2)  the  new  imperialistic  policy  of  Chatham. =  Both  alike 
withdrew  men  from  problems  of  mere  belief,  whether 
theological  or  scientific.  That  the  reaction  was  not  one 
o£  mere  fatigue  over  deism  we  have  already  seen.  It. 
was  a  general  diversion  of  energy,  analogous  to  what . 
had  previously  taken  place  in  France  in  the  reign  of 
Louis  XIV.  As  the  poet  Gray,  himself  orthodox,  put 
the  case  in  1754,  "the  mode  of  freethinking  has  given 
place  to  the  mode  of  not  thinking  at  all."^  In  Hume's 
opinion  the  general  pitch  of  national  intelligence  south 
of  the  Tweed  was  lowered. ■*  This  state  of  things  of 
course  was  favourable  to  religious  revival  ;  but  what 
took  place  was  rather  a  new  growth  of  emotional  pietism 
in  the  new  industrial  masses  (the  population  being  now 

"  Cp.  the  summary  of  Farrar,  Critical  History  of  Fj-ccfJioiighf,  1862, 
pp.  177-8,  which  is  founded  on  that  of  Pusey's  eii.r\y  Historical  Enquiry 
concerning;  the  causes  of  German  RationaHsm,  pp.   124-126.. 

^  The  point  is  further  discussed  in  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  175-6. 

3  Letter  xxxi,  in  Mason's  Memoir. 

''  Letters  to  Smith,  ElHot,  and  Gibbon.  Hill  Burton's  Life  of  Hume, 
>i>  433.  434.  484-5.  487- 


I70        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 


on  a  rapid  increase),  under  the  ministry  of  the  Wesleys 
and  Whitfield,  and  a  further  growth  of  similar  religion 
in  the  new  provincial  middle-class  that  grew  up  on  the 
industrial  basis.  The  universities  all  the  while  were  at 
the  lowest  ebb  of  culture,  but  officially  rabid  against 
philosophic  freethinking.' 

It  would  be  a  great  mistake,  however,  to  suppose  that 
all  this  meant  a  dying  out  of  deism  among  the  educated 
classes.  The  statement  of  Goldsmith,  about  1760,  that 
deists  in  general  '•  have  been  driven  into  a  confession  of 
the  necessity  of  revelation,  or  an  open  avowal  of  atheism,"^ 
is  not  to  be  taken  seriously.  Goldsmith,  whose  own 
orthodoxy  is  very  doubtful,  had  a  whimsical  theory  that 
skepticism,  though  it  might  not  injure  morals,  has  a 
"  manifest  tendency  to  subvert  the  literary  merits"  of  any 
country  ;3  and  argued  accordingly.  Deism,  remaining 
fashionable,  did  but  fall  partly  into  the  background  of 
living  interests,  the  more  concrete  issues  of  politics  and 
the  new  imaginative  literature  occupying  the  foreground. 
The  literary  status  of  deism  after  1750  was  really  higher 
than  ever.  It  was  now  represented  by  Hume;  by  Adam 
Smith  {Moral  Sentiments^  i759);  by  the  scholarship  of 
Conyers  Middleton  ;  and  by  the  posthumous  works  (1754) 
of  Lord  BoLiXGBROKE,  who,  albeit  more  of  a  debater 
than  a  thinker,  debated  with  masterly  power,  in  a  style 
unmatched  for  harmony  and  energetic  grace,  which  had 
already  won  him  a  great  literary  prestige,  though  the 
visible  insincerity  of  his  character  always  countervailed 
his  charm.  His  influence,  commonly  belittled,  was  much 
greater  than  writers  like  Johnson  would  admit  ;  and  it 

'  Compare  the  verdicts  of  Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography,  and  of  Adam 
Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  B.  v,  ch.  i,  art.  2  ;  and  see  the  memoir  of  Smith 
in  1831  ed.  and  McCulloch's  ed.,  and  Rae's  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  1895,  p. 
24.  It  appears  that  about  1764  many  Eng-lish  people  sent  their  sons  to 
Edinburg;h  University  on  accoimt  of  the  better  education  there.  Letter 
of  Blair,  in  Hill  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  ii,  229. 

-  Essays,  iv,  end. 

3  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning,  1765,  ch.  vi.  His  story  of  how  the 
father  of  St.  Foix  cured  the  youth  of  the  desire  to  rationalise  his  creed 
is  not  sug-g-estive  of  conviction.  The  father  pointed  to  a  crucifix,  saying-, 
"  Behold  the  fate  of  a  reformer."  The  story  has  been  often  plagiarised 
since — e.g.,    in  Gait's  Anna/s  of  the  Parish. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSfh  CENTURY        171 


went  deep.  Voltaire  tells'  that  he  had  known  some 
young  pupils  of  Bolingbroke  who  altogether  denied  the 
historic  actuality  of  the  Gospel  Jesus  —  a  stretch  of 
criticism  beyond  the  assimilative  power  of  that  age. 

In  his  lifetime,  however,  BoUngbroke  had  been  extremely 
careful  to  avoid  compromising  himself.  Mr.  Arthur  Hassall, 
in  his  generally  excellent  monograph  on  Bolingbroke  (Statesmen 
Series:  Allen  &  Co.  i88q,  p.  226),  writes,  in  answer  to  the  attack 
of  Johnson,  that  "Bolingbroke,  during  his  lifetime,  had  never 
scrupled  to  publish  criticisms,  remarkable  for  their  freedom,  on 
religious  subjects."  I  cannot  gather  to  what  he  refers  ;  and 
Mr.  Walter  Sichel,  in  his  copious  biography  (2  vols.  1901-2), 
indicates  no  such  publications.  In  his  letter  to  Swift  of 
September  12th,  1724  (Sunff's  Works,  Scott's  ed.  1824,  xvi. 
448-9),  Bolingbroke  angrily  repudiates  the  title  of  esprit  fori, 
declaring,  in  the  very  temper  in  which  pious  posterity  has 
aspersed  himself,   that  "such  are  the  pests  of  society,  because 

they  endeavour  to  loosen  the  bands  of  it I  therefore  not 

only  disown,  but  I  detest,  this  character."  In  this  letter  he  even 
affects  to  believe  in  "  the  truth  of  the  divine  revelation  of  Chris- 
tianit}'."  He  began  to  write  his  essays,  it  is  true,  before  his 
withdrawal  to  France  in  1735,  but  with  no  intention  of  speedily 
publishing  them.  In  his  Letter  to  Mr.  Pope  (published  with 
the  Letter  to  IVjiidham,  1753),  p.  481,  he  writes  :  "  I  have  been  a 
martyr  of  faction  in  politics,  and  have  no  vocation  to  be  so  in 
philosophy."  Cp.  pp.  4S5-6.  It  is  thus  a  complete  blunder  on 
the  part  of  Bagehot  to  sny  (Literary  Studies,  Button's  ed.  iii,  137) 
that  Butlev's  A ua/ojt>-v,  published  in  1736,  was  "designed  as  a 
confutation  of  Shaftesbury  atid  Bolingbroke.''''  It  is  even  said 
(Warton,  Essay  on  Pope,  4th  ed.  ii,  294-5)  that  Pope  did  not  know 
Bolingbroke's  real  opinions  ;  but  Pope's  untruthfulness  was 
such  as  to  discredit  such  a  statement.  Cp.  Bolingbroke's  Letter 
as  cited,  p.  521,  and  his  Philosophical  Works,  8vo-ed.  1754,  ii,  405. 

In  seeking  to  estimate  Bolingbroke's  posthumous  influence 
we  have  to  remember  that  after  the  publication  of  his  works 
the  orthodox  members  of  his  own  party,  who  otherwise  would 
have  forgiven  him  all  his  vices  and  insincerities,  have  held  him 
up  to  hatred.  Scott,  for  instance,  founding  on  Bolingbroke's 
own  dishonest  denunciation  of  freethinkers  as  men  seeking  to 
loosen  the  bands  of  society,  pronounced  his  arrangement  for  the 
posthumous  issue  of  his  works  "an  act  of  wickedness  more 
purely  diabolical  than  any  hitherto  upon  record  in  the  history  of 
any  age  or  nation  "  (Note  to  Bolingbroke's  letter  above  cited  in 

'  Dieu  et  les  Honimes,  ch.  39. 


172        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 


Swiffs  Works,  xvi,  450).  It  would  be  an  error,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  class  him  among  either  the  great  sociologists  or  the 
great  philosophers.  Mr.  Sichel  undertakes  to  show  (vol.  ii, 
ch.x)that  Bolingbroke  had  stimulated  Gibbon  to  a  considerable 
extent  in  his  treatment  of  early  Christianity.  This  is  in  itself 
quite  probable,  and  some  of  the  parallels  cited  are  noteworthy  ; 
but  Mr.  Sichel,  who  always  writes  as  a  panegyrist,  makes  no 
attempt  to  trace  the  common  French  sources  for  both.  He  does 
show  that  Voltaire  manipulated  Bolingbroke's  opinions  in 
reproducing  them.  But  he  does  not  critically  recognise  the 
incoherence  of  Bolingbroke's  eloquent  treatises.  Mr.  Hassall's 
summary  is  nearer  the  truth  ;  but  that  in  turn  does  not  note  how 
well  fitted  was  Bolingbroke's  swift  and  graceful  declamation  to 
do  its  work  with  the  general  public,  which  (if  it  accepted  him 
at  all)  would  make  small  account  of  self-contradiction. 

In  view  of  such  a  reinforcement  of  its  propag-anda, 
deism  could  not  be  regarded  as  in  the  least  degree 
written  down.  In  1765,  accordingly,  we  find  Diderot 
recounting,  on  the  "authority  of  d'Holbach,  who  had 
just  returned  from  a  visit  to  this  country,  that  "the. 
Christian  religion  is  nearly  extinct  in  England.  The 
deists  are  innumerable  ;  there  are  almost  no  atheists  ; 
those  who  are  so,  conceal  it.  An  atheist  and  a  scoundrel 
'are  almost  synonymous  terms  for  them."'  Nor  did  the 
output  of  deistic  literature  end  with  the  posthumous 
works  of  Bolingbroke.  These  were  followed  by  trans- 
lations of  the  new  writings  of  Voltaire,^  who  had 
assimilated  the  whole  propaganda  of  English  deism, 
and  gave  it  out  anew  with  a  wit  and  brilliancy  hitherto 
unknown  in  argumentative  and  critical  literature.  The 
freethinking  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  century,  though 
kept  secondary  to  more  pressing  questions,  was  thus  at 
least  as  deeply  rooted  and  as  convinced  as  that  of  the 
first  quarter. 

What  was  lacking  to  it,  once  more,  was  a  social 
foundation  on  which  it  could  not  only  endure  but 
develop.  In  a  nation  of  which  the  majority  had  no 
intellectual  culture,  such  a  foundation  could  not  exist. 

'  Mdmoires  de  Diderot,  1841,  ii,  25. 

-  These  had  begun  as  early  as  1753  {Micromdgas). 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8ih  CENTURY         173 

Green  exaggerates'  when  he  writes  that  "schools  there 
were  none,  save  the  grammar  schools  of  Edward  and 
Elizabeth  ";-  but  by  another  account  only  twelve  public 
schools  were  founded  in  the  long  reign  of  George  III  ;3 
and,  as  a  result  of  the  indifference  of  two  generations, 
masses  of  the  people  "  were  ignorant  and  brutal  to  a 
degree  which  it  is  hard  to  conceive."*  A  great  increase 
of  population  had  followed  on  the  growth  of  towns  and 
the  development  of  commerce  and  manufactures  even 
between  1700  and  1760  ;s  and  thereafter  the  multiplica- 
tion was  still  more  rapid.  There  was  thus  a  positive 
fall  in  the  culture  standards  of  the  majority  of  the 
people.  According  to  Massey,  "  hardly  any  tradesman 
in  1760  had  more  instruction  than  qualified  him  to  add 
up  a  bill";  and  "a  labourer,  mechanic,  or  domestic 
servant  who  could  read  or  write  possessed  a  rare  accom- 
plishment."*^ As  for  the  Charity  Schools  established 
between  1700  and  1750,  their  express  object  was  to  rear 
humble  tradesmen  and  domestics,  not  to  educate  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  term. 

In  the  view  of  life  which  accepted  this  state  of  things 
the  educated  deists  seem  to  have  shared  ;  at  least,  there 
is  no  record  of  any  agitation  by  them  for  betterment. 
The  state  of  political  thought  was  typified  in  the 
struggle  over  "Wilkes  and  Liberty,"  from  which  con- 
servative temperaments  like  Hume's  turned  away  in 
contempt ;  and  it  is  significant  that  poor  men  were 
persecuted  for  freethinking  while  the  better-placed  went 


'  I  here  extract  a  few  sentences  from  my  paper  on  The  Church  and 
Education,  1903. 

-  Short  History,  ed.  1881,  p.  717.  The  Concise  Description  of  the 
Endoived  Grammar  Schools,  by  Nicholas  CarHsle,  1818,  shows  that 
schools  were  founded  in  all  parts  of  the  country  by  private  bequest  or 
public  action  in  all  periods  since  the  seventeenth  century. 

3  Collis,  in  Transactions  of  the  Social  Science  Association,  1857,  p.  126. 
According-  to  Collis,  48  had  been  founded  by  James  I,  28  under  Charles  I, 
16  under  the  Commonwealth,  36  under  Charles  11,  4  under  James  II,  7 
under  William  and  Mary,  11  under  Anne,  17  under  George  I,  and  7 
under  George  II.      He  does  not  indicate  their  size. 

^  Green,  as  last  cited. 

5  Gibbins,  Industrial  History  of  England,  1894,  p.  151. 

*  Hist,  of  England  under  George  III,  ed.  1865,  ii,  83. 


174        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

free.  Jacob  Ilive,  for  denying  in  a  pamphlet  (1753) 
the  truth  of  revelation,  was  pilloried  thrice,  and  sent  to 
hard  labour  for  three  years.  In  1754  the  Grand  Jury  of 
Middlesex  "presented"  the  editor  and  publisher  of 
Bolingbroke's  posthumous  works' — a  distinction  that  in 
the  previous  generation  had  been  bestowed  on  Mande- 
ville's  Fable  of  the  Bees ;  and  in  1 761,  as  before  noted, 
Peter  Annet,  aged  seventy,  was  pilloried  twice  and  sent 
to  prison  for  discrediting  the  Pentateuch.  The  personal 
influence  of  George  III,  further,  told  everywhere  against 
freethinking  ;  and  the  revival  of  penalties  would  have 
checked  publishing  even  if  there  had  been  no  withdrawal 
of  interest  to  politics. 

Yet  freethinking  treatises  did  appear  at  intervals  in  addition 
to  tlie  works  of  the  better-known  writers,  such  as  Bolingbroke 
and  Hume,  after  the  period  commonly  marked  as  that  of  the 
"decline  of  deism."  Like  a  number  of  the  earlier  works  above 
mentioned,  the  following  (save  Evanson)  are  overlooked  in  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen's  survey  : — 

1746.     Essay  on  Natural  Religion.     Attributed  to  Dryden. 
1746.      Deism  fairly  stated  and  fullv  vindicated,  etc.     Anon. 

1749.  Cooper,  J.  G.     Life  of  Socrates. 

1750.  Dove,  John.     A  Creed  founded  on  Truth  and  Common  Sense. 
The  British  Oracle.     Two  numbers  only. 

1 752.  The  Pillars  of  Priestcraft  and  Orthodoxy  Shaken.  Four  \ols.  of 
freethinking  pamphlets,  collected  (and  some  written)  by 
Thomas  Gordon,  formerly  secretary'  to  Trenchard.  Edited 
by  R.  Barron.     (Reprinted  1768.) 

1765.  Dudgeon,  W.  Philosophical  IVorks  (reprints  of  those  of 
1732,-4,-7,-9,  above  mentioned).  Privately  printed — at 
Glasgow  ? 

1772.      Evanson,  E.      The  Doctrines  of  a  Tri)iity  and  the  Incarnation. 

1777.  ,,  ,,       Letter  to  Bishop  Hurd. 

1781.  Nicholson,  W.      The  Doubts  of  the  Infidels.     Republished  by 

Carlile. 

1782.  Turner,  W.     Answer  to  Dr.  Priestley's  Letters  to  a  Philoso- 

phical Unbeliever. 
1785.     Toulmin,  Dr.  Joshua.^     The  Antiquitv  and  Diiration  of  the 
World. 

■  The  document  is  g-iven  in  Ritchie's  Life  of  Hume,  1807,  pp.  53-55. 
-  Toulmin  was    a  Unitarian   and   a  biographer  of  Socinus.      He  was 
much  molested  in  1791. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        175 

1789.     Toulmin,  Dr.  Joshua.      The  Eternity  of  the  Universe. 

1789.     Cooper,  Dr.  T.      Tracts,  Ethical,  Theological,  and  Political. 

1792.      Evunson,  E.      Tlie  Dissonance  of  the  Four  Evangelists. 

1795.  O'Keefe,  Dr.  J.  A.  On  the  Progress  of  the  Human  Under- 
standing. 

1797.  Davies,  J.  C.  TJie  Script  11  rian''s  Creed.  Prosecuted  and 
imprisoned. 

On  the  other  hand,  apart  from  the  revival  of  popular 
religion  under  Whitefield  and  Wesley,  which  won 
multitudes  of  the  people  whom  no  higher  culture  could 
reach,  there  was  no  recovery  of  educated  belief  upon 
intellectual  lines ;  though  there  was  a  steady  detach- 
ment of  energy  to  the  new  activities  of  conquest  and 
commerce  which  mark  the  second  half  of  the  eiirhteenth 
century  in  England.  On  this  state  of  things  super- 
vened the  massive  performance  of  the  greatest  historical 
writer  England  had  yet  produced.  Gibbon,  educated 
not  by  Oxford  but  by  the  recent  scholarly  literature  of 
France,  had  as  a  mere  boy  seen,  on  reading  Bossuet, 
the  theoretic  weakness  of  Protestantism,  and  had 
straightway  professed  Romanism.  Shaken  as  to  that 
by  a  skilled  Swiss  Protestant,  he  speedily  became  a 
rationalist  pure  and  simple,  with  as  little  of  the  dregs  of 
deism  in  him  as  any  writer  of  his  age  ;  and  his  great 
work  begins,  or  rather  signalises  (since  Hume  and 
Robertson  preceded  him),  a  new  era  of  historical  writing, 
not  merely  by  its  sociological  treatment  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity,  but  by  its  absolutely  anti-theological 
handling  of  all  things. 

The  importance  of  the  new  approach  may  be  at  once 
measured  by  the  zeal  of  the  opposition.  In  no  case, 
perhaps,  has  the  essentially  passional  character  of 
religious  resistance  to  new  thought  been  more  vividly 
shown  than  in  that  of  the  contemporary  attacks  upon 
Gibbon's  History,  By  the  admission  of  Macaulay,  who 
thought  Gibbon  "  most  unfair  "  to  religion,  the  whole 
troop  of  his  assailants  are  now  "  utterly  forgotten  ";  and 
those  orthodox  commentators  who  later  sought  to 
improve  on  their  criticism  have  in  turn,  with  a  notable 


176        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY 


uniformity,  been  rebutted  by  their  successors  ;  till 
Gibbon's  critical  section  ranks  as  the  first  systematically 
scientific  handling  of  the  problem  of  the  rise  of  Chris- 
tianity. He  can  be  seen  to  have  profited  by  all  the 
relevant  deistic  work  done  before  him,  learning  alike 
from  Toland,  from  Middleton,  and  from  Bolingbroke  ; 
though  his  acknowledgments  are  mostly  paid  to 
respectable  Protestants  and  Catholics,  as  Basnage, 
Beausobre,  Lardner,  Mosheim,  and  Tillemont  ;  and  the 
sheer  solidity  of  the  work  has  sustained  it  against  a 
hundred  years  of  hostile  comment.  While  Gibbon  was 
thus  earning  for  his  country  a  new  literary  distinction, 
the  orthodox  interest  was  concerned  above  all  things  to 
convict  him  of  ignorance,  incompetence,  and  dishonesty; 
and  Davis,  the  one  of  his  assailants  who  most  fully 
manifested  all  of  these  qualities,  and  who  will  long  be 
remembered  solely  from  Gibbon's  deadly  exposure,  was 
rewarded  with  a  royal  pension.  Another,  Apthorp, 
received  an  archiepiscopal  living;  while  Chelsum,  the 
one  who  almost  alone  wrote  against  him  like  a  gentle- 
man, got  nothing.  But  no  cabal  could  avail  to  prevent 
the  instant  recognition,  at  home  and  abroad,  of  the 
advent  of  a  new  master  in  history  ;  and  in  the  worst 
times  of  reaction  which  followed,  the  History  of  the 
Decline  and  Fall  of'  the  Roman  Empire  impassively 
defied  the  claims  of  the  ruling  creed. 

In  a  world  which  was  eagerly  reading  Gibbon'  and 
Voltaire,-  there  was  a  peculiar  absurdity  in  Burke's 
famous  question  (1790)  as  to  "  Who  now  reads  Boling- 
broke "  and  the  rest  of  the  older  deists. ^  The  fashionable 
world  was  actually  reading  Bolingbroke  even  then  ;"* 
and  the  work  of  the  older  deists  was  being  done  with 

'  Cp.  Bishop  Watson's  Apology  for  Christianity  (1776)  as  to  the  vogue 
of  unbelief  at  that  date.  [Tiao  Apologies,  ed.  1806,  p.  121.  Cp.  pp.  179, 
399. ) 

=  The  panegyric  on  Voltaire  delivered  at  his  death  by  Frederick  the 
Great  (November  26th,  1778)  was  promptly  translated  into  English  (1779). 

3  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,  T790,  p.  131. 

4  See  Hannah  More's  letter  of  April,  1777,  in  her  Life,  abridged  i6mo- 
ed.  p.  36.  An  edition  of  Shaftesbury,  apparently,  appeared  in  1773,  and 
another  in  1790. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i8th  CENTURY        177 

new  incisiveness  and  thoroughness  by  their  successors.' 
Beside  Burke  in  ParHament,  all  the  while,  was  the 
Prime  Minister,  William  Pitt  the  younger,  an  agnostic 
deist. 

Whether  or  not  the  elder  Pitt  was  a  deist,  the  younger  g-ave 
very  plain  signs  of  being  at  least  no  more.  Mr.  Gladstone 
[Studies  subsidiary  to  the  Works  of  Bishop  Butler,  ed.  1896, 
pp.  30-33)  has  sought  to  discredit  the  recorded  testimony  of 
Wilberforce  {Life  of  IVilberforce,  1838,  i,  98)  that  Pitt  told  him 
"  Bishop  Butler's  work  raised  in  his  mind  more  doubts  than  it 
had  answered."  Mr.  Gladstone  points  to  another  passage  in 
Wilberforce's  diary  which  states  that  Pitt  "commended 
Butler's  Analogy'"  {Life,  \,  90).  But  the  context  shows  that 
Pitt  had  commended  the  book  for  the  express  purpose  of 
turning  Wilberforce's  mind  from  its  evangelical  bias.  Wilber- 
force was  never  a  deist,  and  the  purpose  accordingly  could  not 
have  been  to  make  him  orthodox.  The  two  testimonies  are 
thus  perfectly  consistent ;  especially  when  we  note  the  further 
statement  credibly  reported  to  have  been  made  by  Wilberforce 
{Life,  i,  95),  that  Pitt  later  "  tried  to  reason  vie  out  oj  my  con- 
victiojis.'"  We  have  yet  further  the  emphatic  declaration  of 
Pitt's  niece,  Lady   Hester  Stanhope,  that  he    "never  went  to 

church    in    his    life never    even     talked     about    religion" 

{Memoirs  of  Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  1845,  iii,  166-7).  This  was 
said  in  emphatic  denial  of  the  genuineness  of  the  unctuous 
death-bed  speech  put  in  Pitt's  mouth  by  Gifford.  Lady  Hester's 
high  veracity  is  accredited  by  her  physician  {Travels  of  Lady 
Hester  Stanhope,  1846,  i,  pref.  p.  11).  No  such  character  can 
be  given  to  the  conventional  English  biography  of  the  period. 

We  have  further  to  note  the  circumstantial  account  by 
Wilberforce  in  his  letter  to  the  Rev.  S.  Gisborne  immediately 
after  Pitt's  death  {Correspondence,  1840,  ii,  69-70),  giving  the 
details  he  had  had  in  confidence  from  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln. 
They  are  to  the  effect  that,  after  some  demur  on  Pitt's  part 
("that  he  was  not  worthy  to  offer  up  any  prayer,  or  was  too 
weak  "),  the  Bishop  prayed  with  him  once.  Wilberforce  adds 
his  "fear"  that  "no  further  religious  intercourse  took  place 
before  or  after,  and  I  own  I  thought  7vhat  was  inserted  in  the 
papers  impossible  to  be  true." 

'  The  essays  of  Hume,  including'  the  Dialogues  concerning  Natural 
Religion  (1779),  were  now  circulated  in  repeated  editions.  Mr.  Rae,  in 
his  valuable  Life  of  Adam  Smith,  p.  311,  cites  a  German  observer, 
Wendeborn,  as  writing  in  1785  that  the  Dialogues,  though  a  good  deal 
discussed  in  Germany,  had  made  no  sensation  in  England,  and  were  at 
that  date  entirely  forgotten.  But  a  second  edition  had  been  called  for  in 
1779,  and  they  were  added  to  a  fresh  edition  of  the  essays  in  1788.  Any 
"forgetting"  is  to  be  set  down  to  pre-occupation  with  other  interests. 
VOL.   II  N 


178        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

Among  thinking  men,  too,  the  nascent  science  of 
geology  was  setting  up  a  new  criticism  of  "  revelation  " — 
this  twenty  years  before  the  issue  of  the  epoch-making 
works  of  Hutton/  The  new  phase  of  "infidelity"  was 
of  course  furiously  denounced,  one  of  the  most  angry 
and  most  absurd  of  its  opponents  being  the  poet 
Cowper.^  Still  rationalism  persisted.  Paley,  writing 
in  1786,  protests  that  "Infidelity  is  now  served  up  in 
every  shape  that  is  likely  to  allure,  surprise,  or  beguile 
the  imagination,  in  a  fable,  a  tale,  a  novel,  or  a  poem, 
in  interspersed  or  broken  hints,  remote  and  oblique 
surmises,  in  books  of  travel,  of  philosophy,  of  natural 
history — in  a  word,  in  any  form  rather  than  that  of  a 
professed  and  regular  disquisition. "^  The  orthodox 
Dr.  J.  Ogilvie,  in  the  introduction  to  his  Inquiry  into 
the  Causes  of  the  Infidelity  and  Skepticism  of  the  Times 
(1783),  begins:  "That  the  opinions  of  the  deists  and 
skeptics  have  spread  more  universally  during  a  part  of 
the  last  century  and  in  the  present  than  at  any  former 
aera  since  the  resurrection  of  letters,  is  a  truth  to  which 
the  friends  and  the  enemies  of  religion  will  give  their 
suffrage  without  hesitation."  In  short,  until  the  general 
reversal  of  all  progress  which  followed  on  the  French 
Revolution,  there  had  been  no  such  change  of  opinion 
as  Burke  alleged.  One  of  the  most  popular  writers 
of  the  day  was  Erasmus  Darwin,  a  deist,  whose 
Zoononiia  (1794)  brought  on  him  the  charge  of  atheism. 
Even  in  rural  Scotland,  the  vogue  of  the  poetry  of 
BuRXS,  who  was  substantially  a  deist,  told  of  germinal 
doubt. 

With  the  infehcity  in  prediction  which  is  so  much 
commoner  with  him  than  the  "prescience"  for  which  he  is 
praised,  Burke  announces  that  the  whole  deist  school  "repose 
in  lasting'  oblivion."  The  proposition  would  be  much  more 
true  of  999  out  of  everj-  thousand  writers  on  behalf  of  Chris- 
tianity.     It  is  characteristic  of  Burke,  however,  that  he  does 

^  See  a  letter  in  Bishop  Watson's  Life,  i,  402  ;  and  cp.  Buckle,  ch.  vii, 
note,  218. 

-  See  his  Task,  B.  iii,  150-190  (1783-4),  for  the  prevailing-  religious  tone. 

3  Principles  of  Moral  Philosophy,  B.  v,  ch.  9.  The  whole  chapter  tells 
of  widespread  freethinking'. 


BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY        179 

not  name  Shaftesbury,  a  Whi^  peer  of  the  sacred  period.  Mr. 
Lecky,  writuig  \w  1865,  and  advancini^  on  Burke,  has  said  of 
the  whole  school,  including-  Siiaflesbury,  that  "the  shadow  of 
the  tomb  rests  on  all  :  a  deep,  unbroken  silence,  the  chill  of 
death,  surrounds  them.  They  have  long  ceased  to  wake  any 
interest^'  {Rafio>m/tsin  in  Europe,  i,  116).  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  had  been  discussed  by  Tayler  in  1853  ;  by  Pattison  in 
i860;  and  by  Farrar  in  1862;  and  they  have  since  been  dis- 
cussed at  length  by  Dr.  Hunt,  by  Cairns,  by  Lange,  and  by  Sir 
Leslie  Stephen. 

A  seeming  justice  was  given  to  Burke's  phrase  by  the 
undoubted  reaction  which  took  place  immediately  after- 
wards. In  the  vast  panic  which  followed  on  the  French 
Revolution,  the  multitude  of  mediocre  minds  in  the 
middle  and  upper  classes,  formerly  deistic  or  indifferent, 
took  fright  at  unbelief  as  something  now  visibly  con- 
nected with  democracy  and  regicide  ;  and  orthodoxy 
became  fashionable  on  political  grounds  just  as  skepti- 
cism had  become  fashionable  at  the  Restoration.  Class 
interest  and  political  prejudice  wrought  much  in  both 
cases  ;  only  in  opposite  directions.  Democracy  was  no 
longer  Bibliolatrous,  therefore  aristocracy  was  fain  to 
become  so,  or  at  least  to  grow  respectful  towards  the  Church 
as  a  means  of  social  control.  Gibbon,  in  his  closing 
years,  went  with  the  stream.  And  as  religious  wars  have 
always  tended  to  discredit  religion,  so  a  war  partly 
associated  with  the  freethinking  of  the  French  revo- 
lutionists tended  to  discredit  freethought.  But  even  in 
the  height  of  the  revolutionary  tumult,  and  while  Burke 
was  blustering  about  the  disappearance  of  unbelief, 
Thomas  Paine  was  laying  deep  and  wide  the  English 
foundations  of  a  new  democratic  freethought ;  and  the 
upper-class  reaction  in  the  nature  of  the  case  was 
doomed  to  impermanency,  though  it  was  to  arrest 
English  intellectual  progress  for  over  a  generation. 
The  French  Revolution  had  re-introduced  freethought 
as  a  vital  issue,  even  in  causing  it  to  be  banned  as  a 
dangrer. 


ta' 


That  freethought  at  the  end  of  the  century  was  rather 
driven  inwards  and  downwards  than  expelled  is  made  clear 
by  the    multitude  of  fresh    treatises   on    Christian    evidences. 


i8o        BRITISH  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iSth  CENTURY 

Growing  numerous  after  1790,  they  positively  swarm  for  a 
generation  after  Paley  (1794).  Cp.  Essays  on  the  Evidence  a7id 
Influence  of  Christianity,  Bath,  1790,  pref.  ;  Andrew  Fuller, 
The  Gospel  its  own  Witness,  1799,  pref.  and  concluding  address 
to  deists  ;  Watson's  sermon  of  1795,  in  Two  Apologies,  ed.  1806, 
p.  399;  Priestley's  Memoirs  (vixxXiQW  in  1795),  1806,  pp.  127-8; 
Wilberforce's   Practical   View,    1797,  passim  {e.g.,    pp.    366-9, 

8th    ed.    1841)  ;    Rev.     D.   Simpson,   A    Plea   for  Religio)i 

addressed  to  the  Disciples  of  Thomas  Paine,  1797.  The  latter 
writer  states  (2nd  ed.  p.  126)  that  "  infidelity  is  at  this  moment 
running  like  wildfire  among  the  common  people  ";  and  Fuller 
(2nd  ed.  p.  128)  speaks  of  the  Monthly  Magazine  as  "pretty 
evidently  devoted  to  the  cause  of  infidelity."  A  pamphlet  o\\ 
The  Rise  and  Dissohition  of  the  Infidel  Societies  in  this  Metropolis 
(London,  1800),  by  W.  Hamilton  Reid,  describes  the  period  as 
the  first  "  in  which  the  doctrines  of  infidelity  have  been  exten- 
sively circulated  among  the  lower  orders  ";  and  a  Summary  of 
Christian  Evidences,  by  Bishop  Porteous  (1800  ;  i6th  ed.  1826), 
afilirms,  in  agreement  with  the  1799  Report  of  the  Lords'  Com- 
mittee on  Treasonable  Societies,  that  "  new  compendiums  of 
infidelity,  and  new  libels  on  Christianity,  are  dispersed  continu- 
ally, with  indefatigable  industry,  through  every  part  of  the 
kingdom,  and  every  class  of  the  community."  Freethought,  in 
short,  was  becoming  democratised. 


Chapter  XVI. 

EUROPEAN    FREETHOUGHT,    FROM    DES- 
CARTES TO  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION 

§   I.  France  and  Holland. 

I.   We   have  seen    France,    in  the   first  quarter  of    the 
seventeenth  century,  pervaded  in  its  upper  classes  by  a 
freethought  partly  born  of  the  knowledge  that  religion 
counted  for  little  but  harm  in  public  affairs,  partly  the 
result  of  such  argumentation  as  had  been  thrown  out  by 
Montaip:ne  and   codified  bv  Charron.     That  it  was  not 
the  freethinking  of  mere  idle  men  of  the  world  is  clear 
when  we  note  the  names  and  writings  of  La  Mothe  le 
Vayer,  Gui  Patin,  and  Gabriel  Naude,  all  scholars, 
all  heretics  of  the  skeptical  and  rationalistic  order.     The 
first,  one  of  the  early   members   of  the  new  Academy 
founded  by  Richelieu,   is  an   interesting  figure'  in  the 
history  of  culture,  being  a  skeptic  of  the  school  of  Sextus 
Empiricus,  but  practically  a  great  friend   of  tolerance. 
Standing    in   favour  with   Richelieu,   he   wrote   at  that 
statesman's  suggestion   a  treatise  On  the  Virtue  of  the 
Heathen^    justifying   toleration    by    pagan    example — a 
course    which    raises    the   question    whether    Richelieu 
himself  was  not  strongly  touched  by  the  rationalism  of 
his  age.      If  it  be  true  that  the  great  Cardinal  "  believed 
as  all  the  world  did  in  his  time,"-  there  is  little  more  to 
be  said,  for  unbelief,  as  we  have  seen,  was  already  abun- 
dant,  and    even    somewhat   fashionable.     Certainly    no 
ecclesiastic    in   high   power   ever  followed  a  less  eccle- 
siastical policy  ;3  and  from  the  date  of  his  appointment 
as  Minister  to   Louis  XIII  (1624),  for  forty  years,  there 

'  See  the  notices  of  him  in  Owen's  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance  ; 
and  in  Sainte-Beuve,  Port  Royal,  iii,  180,  etc. 

~  Hanotaux,  Hist,  du  Cardinal  de  Richelieu,  1893,  i,  pref.  p.  7. 
2  Cp.  Buckle,  ch.  viii,  i-vol.  ed.  pp.  305-10,  325-8. 

181 


i82  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

was   no  burning  of  heretics  or  unbelievers  in   France. 
If  he  was  orthodox,  it  was  very  passively.' 

Le  Vayer's  Dialogues  of  Orashts  Tubero  (1633)  is 
philosophically  his  most  important  work  f  but  its 
tranquil  Pyrrhonism  was  not  calculated  to  affect  greatly 
the  current  thought  of  his  day  ;  and  he  ranked  rather  as 
a  man  of  all-round  learning^  than  as  a  polemist,  being 
reputed  "  a  little  contradictory,  but  in  no  way  bigoted  or 
obstinate,  all  opinions  being  to  him  nearly  indifferent, 
excepting  those  of  which  faith  does  not  permit  us  to 
doubt. "+  The  last  phrase  tells  of  the  fact  that  it  affects 
to  negate  :  Le  Vayer's  skepticism  was  well  known.  He 
was  not  indeed  an  original  thinker,  most  of  his  ideas 
being  echoes  from  the  skeptics  of  antiquity  ;5  and  it  has 
been  not  unjustly  said  of  him  that  he  is  rather  of  the 
sixteenth  century  than  of  the  seventeenth  or  the 
eighteenth.'' 

2.  Between  this  negative  development  of  the  doctrine 
of  Montaigne  and  the  vogue  of  upper-class  deism,  the 
philosophy  of  Descartes,  with  its  careful  profession  of 
submission  to  the  Church,  had  an  easy  reception  ;  and  on 
the  appearance  of  the  Discours  de  la  Methode  (1637)  it 
speedily  affected  the  whole  thought  of  France,  the  women 
of  the  leisured  class,  now  much  given  to  literature,  being 
among  its  students. ^  From  the  first,  the  Jansenists,  who 
were  the  most  serious  religious  thinkers  of  the  time, 
accepted  the  Cartesian  system  as  in  the  main  soundly 
Christian  ;  and  its  founder's  authority  has  some  such 
influence  in  keeping  up  the  prestige  of  orthodoxy  as  had 

'  See  the  good  criticism  of  M.  Hanotaux  in   Perrons,  Les  Libertius  en 
France  au  xvii.  si^cle,  p.  95  sq. 

-  He  wrote  very  many,  the  final  collection  fillingf  three  volumes  folio, 
and  fifteen  in  duodecimo. 

3  "On  le  regarde  comme  le  Plutarque  de  notre  si^cle  "  (Perrault,  Les 
Homtnes  Illusfres  du  XVIIe  Steele,  t^d.  1701,  ii,  131). 

•*  Perrault,  ii,  132. 

5  M.  Perrens,  ■who  endorses  this  criticism,  does  not  note  that  some 
passages  he  quotes  from  the  Dialogues,  as  to  atheism  being  less  disturb- 
ing to  States  than  superstition,  are  borrowed  from  Bacon's  essay  Of 
Atheism,  of  which  Le  Vayer  would  read  the  Latin  version. 

^  Perrens,  p.  132. 

7  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  litt.  fraiigaise,  56  ^dit.  p.  396  ;  Bruneti^re,  Etudes 
Critiques,  36  s^rle,  p.  2  ;  Buckle,  i-vol.  ed.  p.  338. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  183 


that  of  Locke  later  in  England.  Boileau  is  named  among 
those  whom  he  so  influenced.'  But  a  merely  external 
influence  of  this  kind  could  not  counteract  the  whole 
social  and  intellectual  tendency  towards  a  secular  view  of 
life,  a  tendency  revealed  on  the  one  hand  by  the  series  of 
treatises  from  eminent  churchmen,  defending  the  faith 
against  unpublished  attacks,  and  on  the  other  hand  by 
the  prevailing  tone  in  belles  lettres.  Malherbe,  the  literary 
dictator  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century,  had  died  in 
1628  with  the  character  of  a  scoffer  ;-  and  the  fashion 
now  lasted  till  the  latter  half  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV. 
Two  years  after  the  burning  of  Vanini,  a  young  man 
named  Jean  Fontanier  had  been  burned  alive  on  the 
Place  de  Greve  at  Paris,  apparently  for  the  doctrines 
laid  down  by  him  in  a  manuscript  entitled  Le  Tresor 
Inestimable,  written  on  deistic  and  anti-Catholic  lines. ^ 
But  the  cases  of  the  poet  Theophile  de  Viau,  who  about 
1623  suffered  prosecution  on  a  charge  of  impiety,^  and 
of  his  companions  Berthelot  and  Colletet — who  like  him 
were  condemned  but  set  free  by  royal  favour — appear  to 
be  the  only  others  of  the  kind  for  over  a  generation. 
Frivolity  of  tone  sufficed  to  ward  off  legal  pursuit.  It 
was  in  1665,  some  years  after  the  death  of  Mazarin,  who 
had  maintained  Richelieu's  policy  of  tolerance,  that 
Claude  Petit  was  burnt  at  Paris  for  "impious  pieces  ";5 
and  even  then  there  was  no  general  reversion  to  ortho- 
doxy, the  upper-class  tone  remaining,  as  in  the  age  of 
Richelieu  and  Mazarin,  more  or  less  unbelieving.  When 
Corneille  had  introduced  a  touch  of  Christian  zeal  into 
his  Polyeitcte  (1643)  he  had  given  general  offence  to  the 
dilettants  of  both   sexes. ^     Moliere,  again,  the  disciple 

'  Lanson,  p.  397.  -  Perrens,  pp.  84-85. 

3  Cp.  Perrens,  pp.  68-69,  ^.iid  refs. 

■*  See  Duvernet,  Vie  de  Voltaire,  ch.  i,  and  note  i  ;  and  Perrens,  pp. 
74-80. 

3  For  all  that  is  known  of  Petit  see  the  Avertissement  to  Bibliophile 
^BLcdh'^  <i(X\\!\on  oi  Paris  ridicule  ct  burlesque  an  jyibwe  sii'cle,  and  refs. 
in  Perrens,  p.  153.  After  Petifs  death,  his  friend  Du  Pelletier  defended 
him  as  being  a  deist  ;  but  he  seems  in  his  youthful  writing's  to  have 
blasphemed  at  large,  and  he  had  been  guilty  of  assassinating  a  young 
monk.      He  was  burned,  however,  for  blaspheming  the  Virgin. 

*  Guizot,  Corneille  et  son   temps,  ed.  18S0,   p.  200.     The  circle  of  the 


i84  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

of  Gassendi'  and  "the  very  genius  of  reason,"^  was 
unquestionably  an  unbeliever  ;-^  and  only  the  personal 
protection  of  Louis  XIV,  which  after  all  could  not  avail 
to  support  such  a  play  as  Tartufe  against  the  fury  of  the 
bigots,  enabled  him  to  sustain  himself  at  all  against 
them.  Equally  freethinking  was  his  brilliant  prede- 
cessor and  early  comrade,  Cyrano  de  Bergerac 
(1620-1655),  who  did  not  fear  to  indicate  his  frame  of 
mind  in  one  of  his  dramas.  In  La  Mort  d' Agrippine 
he  puts  in  the  mouth  of  Sejanus,  as  was  said  by  a  con- 
temporary, "horrible  things  against  the  Gods,"  notably 
the  phrase,  "  whom  men  made,  and  who  did  not  make 
men,"+  which,  however,  generally  passed  as  an  attack 
on  polytheism  ;  and  though  there  was  certainly  no 
blasphemous  intention  in  the  phrase,  Frappons,  voila 
Vhostie  [  =  hostia,  victim],  some  pretended  to  regard  it 
as  an  insult  to  the  Catholic  hosi.^  At  times  Cyrano 
writes  like  a  deist  f  but  in  so  many  other  passages  does 
he  hold  the  language  of  a  convinced  materialist,  and  of 
a  scoffer  at  that,^  that  he  can  hardly  be  taken  seriously 
on  the  former  head."     In  short,  he  was  one  of  the  first 

Hotel  Rambouillet  were  especially  hostile.  Cp.  Pallisot's  note  to 
Polyeucte,  end.  On  the  other  hand,  Corneille  found  it  prudent  to  cancel 
four  skeptical  lines  which  he  had  originally  put  in  the  mouth  of  the  pagan 
Severus,  the  sage  of  the  piece.      Perrins,  Les  Liberfiiis,  p.  140. 

'  Under  whom  he  studied  in  his  youth  with  a  number  of  other  notably 
independent  spirits,  among  them  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  See  Sainte- 
Beuve's  essay  on  Moli^re,  prefixed  to  the  Hachette  edition. 

^  Constant  Coquelin,  art.  "Don  Juan"  in  the  International  Review, 
September,  1903,  p.  61 — an  acute  and  scholarly  study. 

3  "  iMoliere  is  a  freethinker  to  the  marrow  of  his  bones "  (Perrens, 
p.  280).  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  520;  Fournier,  Etudes  sur  Moliere,  1885,  pp. 
122-3;  Soury,  Brev.  de  Thist.  dii  mater,  p.  384.  "  Ginguene,"  writes 
Sainte-Beuve,  "  a  publie  une  brochure  pour  montrer  Rabelais  precurseur 
de  la  revolution  francaise  ;  c'etoit  inutile  a  prouver  sur  Moliere  "  (essay 
cited). 

■•  Act  II,  sc.  i\',  in  CEiivres  Coniiques,  etc.,  ed.  Jacob,  rep.  by  Garnier, 
pp.  426-7. 

5  See  Jacob's  note  i7i  Inc.,  ed.  cited,  p.  455. 

*  E.g.,  his  Lettre  contre  lui  Ptfdant  (i\o.  13  of  the  Lettres  Satiriqucs  in 
ed.  cited,  p.  181),  which,  however,  appears  to  have  been  mutilated  in 
some  editions  ;  as  one  of  the  deistic  sentences  cited  by  M.  Perrens, 
p.  247,  does  not  appear  in  the  reprint  of  Bibliophile  Jacob. 

7  E.g.,  the  Histoire  des  Oiseaiix  in  the  Histoire  comiqite  dcs  dtats  et 
einpircs  du  Soleil,  ed.  Jacob  (Garnier),  p.  278  ;  and  the  Fragment  de 
Physique  (same  vol.). 

^  See  the  careful  criticism  of  Perrens,  pp.  248-250. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  185 

of  the  hardy  freethinkers  who,  under  the  tolerant  rule  of 
Richelieu  and   Mazarin,  gave  clear  voice  to  the  newer 
spirit.       Under  any  other  government,  he  would  have 
been  in  danger  of  his  life  :  as   it  was,  he  was  menaced 
with  prosecutions  ;  his   Agrippine  was   forbidden  ;   the 
first  edition  of  his  Pedant  Joiie  was  confiscated  ;  during 
his  last  illness  there  was  an  attempt  to  seize  his  manu- 
scripts ;  and   down   till  the  time  of  the   Revolution   the 
editions    of    his  works    were  eagerly   bought    up    and 
destroyed  by  zealots.'     His  recent  literary  rehabilitation 
thus    hardly  serves    to    realise    his    importance    in   the 
history  of  freethought.     Between  Cyrano  and  Moliere  it 
would  appear  that  there  was  little  less  of  rationalistic 
ferment  in  the  France  of  their  day  than  in  England  in  the 
same  period.     Bossuet  avows  in  a  letter  to  Huet  in  1678 
that  impiety  and  unbelief  abound  more  than  ever  before."" 
3.   Even  in  the  apologetic  reasoning  of  the  greatest 
French  prose  writer  of  that  age,  Pascal,  we    have  the 
most  pregnant  testimony  to  the  prevalence  of  unbelief; 
for  not  only  were  the  fragments  preserved  as  Pensees 
(1670)  part  of  a  planned  defence  of  religion  against  con- 
temporary rationalism, 3  but  they  themselves  show  their 
author  profoundly  unable  to  believe,  save  by  a  desperate 
abnegation   of   reason.     The  case  of   Pascal   is  that  of 
Berkeley    with    a   difference :    the    latter   suffered    from 
hypochondria,  but  reacted  with  nervous  energy;  Pascal, 
a  physical  degenerate,  prematurely  profound,  was  pre- 
maturely old  ;  and  his  pietism   in   its  final  form  is  the 
expression  of  the  physical  collapse.-^ 

'   Bibliophile  Jacob,  pref.  to  ed.  cited,  pp.  i-ii. 

-  Perrens,  p.  302.  Compare  Bossuet's  earlier  sermon  for  the  Second 
Sunday  of  Advent,  1665,  cited  by  Perrens,  pp.  253-4,  where  he  speaks 
with  something-  like  fury  of  the  free  discussion  around  him. 

3  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  work  as  published  contained  matter 
not  Pascal's.  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Etudes,  iii,  46-47  ;  and  the  editions  of  the 
Pensees  by  Faugere  and  Havet. 

■*  This  is  disputed  by  M.  Lanson,  an  always  weighty  authority.  He 
writes  (p.  464)  that  Pascal  was  "neither  mad  nor  ill"  when  he  ga\e  him- 
self up  wholly  to  religion.  But  Pascal  had  chrotiically  suffered  from 
intense  pains  in  the  head  from  his  eig^hteenth  year ;  and  M.  Lanson 
admits  (p.  451)  that  the  Pensdes  were  written  in  intervals  of  acute  suffer- 
ing-. Cp.  Pascal's  Priere  pour  demander  a  Dieu  le  bon  usage  des  maladies; 
and  Owen,  French  Skeptics,  pp.  746,  7S4. 


i86  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Doubtless  the  levity  and  license  of  the //i&er/fzVzj  in  high 
places'  confirmed  him  in  his  revolt  against  unbelief; 
but  his  own  credence  was  an  act  rather  of  despairing 
emotion  than  of  rational  conviction.  The  man  who 
advised  doubters  to  make  a  habit  of  causing  masses  to 
be  said  and  following  religious  rites,  on  the  score  that 
ccla  voits  fera  croire  et  vous  abetira — "  that  will  make 
you  believe  and  will  stupefy  you"'' — was  a  pathological 
case  ;  and  though  the  whole  Jansenist  movement  latterly 
stood  for  a  reaction  against  freethinking,  it  can  hardly  be 
doubted  that  the  Pensces  ijenerallv  acted  as  a  solvent 
rather  than  as  a  sustainer  of  religious  beliefs.-^  The 
same  question  arises  concerning  the  famous  Lettres 
Proviuciales  (1656),  written  by  Pascal  in  defence  of 
Arnauld  against  the  persecution  of  the  Jesuits,  who 
carried  on  in  Arnauld's  case  their  campaign  against 
Jansen,  whom  they  charged  with  mis-stating  the  doctrine 
of  Augustine  in  his  great  work  expounding  that  Father. 
Once  more  the  Catholic  Church  was  swerving  from  its 
own  established  doctrine  of  predestination,  the  Spanish 
Jesuit  Molina  having  set  up  a  new  movement  in  the 
Pelagian  or  Arminian  direction.  The  cause  of  the 
Jansenists  has  been  represented  as  that  of  freedom  of 
thought  and  speech;-*  and  this  it  relatively  was  insofar 
as  Jansen  and  Arnauld  sought  for  a  hearing,  while  the 
Jesuit-ridden  Sorbonne  strove  to  silence  and  punish 
them.  Pascal  had  to  ^o  from  printer  to  printer  as  his 
Letters  succeeded  each  other,  the  first  three  being 
successively  prosecuted  by  the  clerical  authorities  ;  and 
in  their  collected  form  they  found  publicity  only  by 
being  printed  at  Rouen  and  published  at  Amsterdam, 


'  As  to  some  oi  these  see  Perrens,  pp.  158-169.  They  nickided  the 
great  Condt^  and  some  of  the  women  in  his  circle  ;  all  of  them  unserious 
in  their  skepticism,  and  all  "  converted  "  when  the  physique  gfave  the 
required  cue. 

-  Pensces,  ed.  Faugi^re,  ii,  168-9.  The  "abetira"  comes  from 
Montaigne. 

3  Thus  Mr.  0\\en  treats  Pascal  as  a  skeptic,  which  piiilosc^phically  he 
was,  insofar  as  he  really  philosophised  and  did  not  merely  catch  at  pleas 
for  his  emotional  beliefs. 

"t  Vinet,  Etudes  sur  Blaise  Pascal,  3e  t^dit.  p.  267  sq. 


FRAXCE  AND  HOLLAND  187 

with  the  rubric  of  Colog;"ne.  All  the  while  Jansenism 
claimed  to  be  strict  orthodoxy  ;  and  it  was  in  virtue  only 
of  the  irreducible  element  of  rationalism  in  Pascal  that 
the  school  of  Port  Royal  made  for  freethought  in  any 
higher  or  more  general  sense.  Indeed,  between  his 
own  reputation  for  piety  and  that  of  the  Jansenists  for 
orthodoxy,  the  Provincial  Letters  have  a  conventional 
standing  as  orthodox  compositions.  It  is  strange, 
however,  that  those  who  charge  upon  the  satire  of  the 
later  philosophers  the  downfall  of  Catholicism  in  France 
should  not  realise  the  plain  tendency  of  these  brilliant 
satires  to  discredit  the  entire  authority  of  the  church, 
and,  further,  by  their  own  dogmatic  weaknesses,  to  put 
all  dogma  alike  under  suspicion.'  Few  men  can  read  the 
Proviiiciales  without  being  irresistibly  impressed  by  the 
utter  absurdity  of  the  problem  over  which  the  entire 
religious  intelligence  of  a  great  nation  was  engrossed. 
It  was,  in  fact,  the  endless  wrangles  of  the  religious 
factions  over  unintelligible  issues  that  more  than  any 
other  single  cause  fostered  unbelief;-  and  Pascal's 
writings  only  deepened  the  trouble.  Even  Bossuet,  in 
his  History  of  the  Variations  of  the  Protestant  Churches, 
did  but  throw  a  new  light  on  the  hollowness  of  the 
grounds  of  religion  ;  and  for  thoughtful  readers  gave 
a  lead  rather  to  atheism  than  to  Catholicism.  The 
converts  it  would  make  to  the  Catholic  Church  would  be 
precisely  those  whose  adherence  was  of  least  value, 
since  they  had  not  even  the  temperamental  basis  which, 
rather  than  argument,  kept  Bossuet  a  believer,  and  were 
Catholics  only  for  lack  of  courage  to  put  all  religion 
aside. 

'  Cp.  the  itloge  de  Pascal  by  Bordas  Demoulin  in  Didot  ed.  of  the 
Lettres,  1854,  pp.  xxii-xxiii,  and  cit.  from  Sainte-Beuve.  Mark  Pattison, 
it  seems,  held  that  the  Jesuits  had  the  best  of  the  argument.  See  the 
Letters  of  Lord  Acton  to  Mary  Gladstone,  1904,  p.  207.  As  regards  the 
effect  of  Jansenism  on  behef,  we  find  De  Tocqueville  pronouncing  that 

"  Le  Jansenisme  ouvrit la  breche  par  laquelle  la  philosophic  du  i8e 

siicle  devait  faire  irruption "  {Hist,  philos.  du  regne  de  Louis  XV, 
1849,  i,  2). 

=  Cp.  Voltaire's  letter  of  1768,  cited  by  Mr.  Morley,  Voltaire,  4th  ed. 
P-  '59- 


i88  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

4.  A  similar  fatality  attended  the  labours  of  the 
learned  Huet,  bishop  of  Avranches,  whose  Demonstratio 
Evangelica  {iG']^)  is  remarkable  as  anticipating-  Berkeley 
in  the  arerument  from  the  arbitrariness  of  mathematical 
assumptions.  He,  too,  by  that  and  by  his  later  works, 
made  for  sheer  philosophical  skepticism,'  always  a 
dangerous  basis  for  orthodoxy.""  Such  an  evolution,  on 
the  part  of  a  man  of  uncommon  intellectual  energy, 
challenges  attention,  the  more  so  seeing  that  it  typifies 
a  good  deal  of  thinking  within  the  Catholic  pale,  on 
lines  already  noted  as  following  on  the  debate  with 
Protestantism.  Honestly  pious  by  bent  of  mind,  but 
always  occupied  with  processes  of  reasoning  and 
research,  Huet  leant  more  and  more,  as  he  grew  in 
years,  to  the  skeptical  defence  against  the  pressures  of 
Protestantism  and  rationalism,  at  once  following  and 
furthering  the  tendency  of  his  age.  A  distinguished 
English  critic,  noting  the  general  movement,  pronounces 
that  Huet  took  up  philosophy  "not  as  an  end  but  as 
a  means — not  for  its  own  sake  but  for  the  support  of 
religion";  and  that  his  attitude  is  thus  quite  different 
from  Pascal's. 3  But  the  two  cases  are  really  on  a  level, 
Pascal  too  being  driven  to  philosophy  in  reaction  against 
incredulity  ;  and  though  Pascal's  work  is  of  a  more 
bitter  and  morbid  intensity,  Huet  also  had  in  him  that 
psychic  craving  for  a  supernatural  support  which  is  the 
essence  of  latter-day  religion.  And  if  we  credit  this 
spirit  to  Pascal  and  to  Huet,  as  we  do  to  Newman,  we 
must  suppose  that  it  partly  touched  the  whole  move- 
ment of  pro-Catholic  skepticism  which  has  been  above 
noted  as  following  on  the  Reformation.  It  is  ascribing 
to  it  as  a  whole  too  much  of  calculation  and  strategy  to 


'  Cp.  Owen,  French  Skeptics,  pp.  762-3,  767. 

^  This  was  expressly  urged  ag-ainst  Huet  by  Arnauld.  See  the  Notice 
in  Jourdain's  ed.  of  the  Logique  de  Port  Royal,  1854,  p.  xi  ;  Perrens,  Les 
Libertins,  p.  301  ;  and  Bouillier,  Hist,  de  la  philos.  cartdsiemie,  1854, 
i.  595-6,  where  are  cited  the  letters  of  Arnauld  (Nos.  830,  834,  and  837 
in  (Euvres  Compl.  iii,  396,  404,  424)  denouncing  Huet's  pyrrhonism  as 
"  impious  "  and  perfectly  adapted  to  the  purposes  of  the  freethinkers. 

3   Pattison,  Essays,  1889,  i,  303-4. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  189 

say  of  its  combatants  that  "  they  conceived  the  desperate 
design  of  first  ruining  the  territory  they  were  prepared 
to  evacuate  ;  before  philosophy  was  handed  over  to  the 
philosophers  the  old  Aristotelian  citadel  was  to  be  blown 
into  the  air."'  In  reality  they  caught,  as  religious  men 
will,  with  passion  rather  than  with  policy,  at  any  plea 
that  might  seem  fitted  to  beat  down  the  presumption  of 
"  the  wild,  living  intellect  of  man  "p  and  their  skepticism 
had  a  certain  sincerity  inasmuch  as,  trained  to  uncritical 
belief,  they  had  never  found  for  themselves  the  grounds 
of  rational  certitude. 

Inasmuch,  too,  as  Protestantism  had  no  such  ground, 
and  rationalism  was  still  far  from  having  cleared  its 
bases,  Huet,  as  things  went,  was  within  his  moral  rights 
when  he  set  forth  his  transcendentalist  skepticism  in  his 
Qitcestiones  AlnetancE  in  1690.  Though  written  in  very 
limpid  Latin, 3  that  work  attracted  practically  no  atten- 
tion ;  and  though,  having  a  repute  for  provincialism  in 
his  French  style,  Huet  was  loth  to  resort  to  the  vernacular, 
he  did  devote  his  spare  hours  through  a  number  of  his 
latter  years  to  preparing  his  Traite  Philosophique  de  la 
faiblesse  de  V esprit  Immain,  which,  dying  in  1722,  he 
left  to  be  published  posthumously  (1723).  The  outcry 
against  his  criticism  of  Descartes  and  his  Demonstratio 
had  indisposed  him  for  further  personal  strife  ;  but  he 
was  determined  to  leave  a  completed  message.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  a  sincere  and  devoted  Catholic  bishop 
"  left,  as  his  last  legacy  to  his  fellow-men,  a  work  of  the 
most  outrageous  skepticism. "^^  It  was  immediately 
translated  into  English  and  German  ;  and  though  it 
was  probably  found  somewhat  superfluous  in  deistic 
England,  and  supersubtle  in  Lutheran  Germany,  it 
went  far  to  prepare  the  ground  for  the  active  unbelief 

'    Pattison,  as  cited. 

^  "  After  all,  a  book  [the  Bible]  cannot  make  a  stand  against  the  wild, 
living-  intellect  of  man."  Newman,  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  isted.  p.  382. 
The  passage  seems  to  disappear  from  later  edition  s. 

3  Pattison  disparages  it  as  colourless,  a  fault  he  charges  on  Jesuit 
Latin  in  general.  But  by  most  moderns  the  Latin  style  of  Huet  will  be 
found  pure  and  pleasant. 

"■  Pattison,  Essays,  i,  299.      Cp.  Bouillier,  i,  595. 


I  go 


MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


of  the  next  generation  in  France.  It  is  significant  that 
whereas  in  the  year  of  the  issue  of  the  Demonstratio  the 
Duchesse  d'Orleans  could  write  that  "  every  young  man 
either  is  or  affects  to  be  an  atheist,"  Le  Vassor  wrote  in 
1688  :  "  People  talk  only  of  reason,  of  good  taste,  of 
force  of  mind,  of  the  advantage  of  those  who  can  raise 
themselves  above  the  prejudices  of  education  and  of  the 
society  in  which  one  is  born.  Pyrrhonism  is  the  fashion 
in  many  things  :  men  say  that  rectitude  of  mind  consists 
in  '  not  believing  lightly  '  and  in  being  '  ready  to 
doubt. '"^ 

On  both  lines,  obviously,  freethought  was  the  gainer  ; 
and  in  a  Jesuit  treatise,  Le  Monde  Condamne  par  lny- 
viesnie,  published  in  \6c)$,\hQ.  Preface  contre  Tincredulite 
des  libertins  sets  out  with  the  avowal  that  "  to  draw  the 
condemnation  of  the  world  out  of  its  own  mouth,  it  is 
necessary  to  attack  first  the  incredulity  of  the  unbelievers 
{libertins),  who  compose  the  main  part  of  it,  and  who 
under  some  appearance  of  Christianity  conceal  a  mind 
either  Judaic  [read  deistic\  or  pagan."  Such  was  France 
to  a  religious  eye  at  the  height  of  the  Catholic  triumph 
over  Protestantism. 

5.  While  the  evolution  had  been  to  no  small  extent 
the  outcome  of  defences  of  the  faith,  there  had  also  been 
at  work  a  directly  rationalising  influence  in  the  teaching 
of  Pierre  Gassend  or  Gassendi  (1592-1655),  who,  living 
his  life  as  a  canon  of  the  church,  reverted  in  his  doctrine 
to  the  philosophy  of  Epicurus,  alike  in  physics  and 
ethics.  It  seems  clear  that  he  never  had  any  religious 
leanings,  but  simply  entered  the  church  on  the  advice 
of  friends  who  pointed  out  to  him  how  much  better  a 
provision  it  gave,  in  income  and  leisure,  than  the 
professorship  he  held  in  his  youth  at  the  university  of 
Aix.-     Professing  like  Descartes  a  strict  submission  to 

'  M.  Le  Vassor,  De  la  veritable  religion,  1688,  pref.  Le  Vassor  speaks 
in  the  same  preface  of "  this  multitude  of  libertins  and  of  unbelievers 
which  now  terrifies  us." 

-  Cp.  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  B.  v,  ch.  i  (McCulloch's  ed. 
1839,  PP-  364-5)-  It  is  told  of  him  that  when  dying-  he  said  :  "  I  know 
not  who  brought  me  into  the  world,  neither  do  I  know  what  was  to  do 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  191 


the  church,  he  yet  set  forth  a  theory  of  things  which 
had  in  all  ages  been  recognised  as  fundamentally  irre- 
concilable with  the  Christian  creed  ;  and  his  substantial 
exemption   from   penalties   is  one  of  the  proofs  of  the 
permeation  of  the  church  at  the  time  by  the  new  spirit. 
The  correspondent  of  Galileo  and   Kepler,  he  was  the 
friend  of  La  Mothe  le  Vayer  and  Naude  ;  and  Gui  Patin 
was  his  physician  and  intimate.'     Strong  as  a  physicist 
and  astronomer  where   Descartes  was  weak,  he  divides 
with    him    the    credit   of    practically    renewing    natural 
philosophy  ;    Newton    following    Gassendi    rather   than 
Descartes.-     Indeed,  Gassendi's  youthful  attack  on  the 
Aristotelian   physics  (1624)  makes  him   the  predecessor 
of   Descartes ;    and    he  expressly  opposed    his  contem- 
porary on  points  of  physics  and   metaphysics  on  which 
he  thought  him  chimerical,   and  so  promoted  unbelief 
where  Descartes  made  for  orthodoxy.  ^     Of  the  criticisms 
on  his  Meditations  to  which  Descartes  published  replies, 
those  of  Gassendi  are  distinctly  the  most  searching  and 
sustained.     The    later    position    of    Hume,    indeed,    is 
explicitly  taken  up  in  the  first  objection  of  Craterus  ;  + 
but  the  persistent  pressure  of  Gassendi  on  the  theistic 
and  spiritistic  assumptions  of  Descartes  reads  like  the 
reasoning"   of    a    modern    atheist. ^     Yet   the   works    of 
Descartes  were  placed  on   the  Index  Librorum  Prohi- 
bitonim,  and  later  even  vetoed  at  Paris  university,*^  and 
those  of  Gassendi  were  not,  though  his  early  work  on 
Aristotelianism  had  to  be  stopped  after  the  first  volume 

there,  nor  why  I  go  out  of  it."  Reflections  on  tlie  Death  of  Freethinkers, 
by  Deslandes  (Engf.  trans,  of  the  Reflexions  sur  les  g^i-atids  homvies  qui 
soiit  marts  en  plaisantant),  1713,  p.  105. 

'  For  a  good  account  of  Gassendi  and  his  group  (founded  on  Lange, 
§  iii,  ch.  i)  see  Soury,  Brdviaire  de  Phist.  de  mat^rialisme,  Pt.  iii,  ch.  2. 

=  Voltaire,  Elements  de  philos.  de  Neiaton,  ch.  ii  ;  Lange,  i,  232  (Eng. 
trans,  i,  267)  and  note,  and  p.  269. 

3  Bavle,  art.  Pomponace,  Notes  F  and  G.  The  complaint  was  made 
by  Arnauld,  who  with  the  rest  of  the  Jansenists  was  substantially  a 
Cartesian. 

•*  See  it  in  Garnier's  ed.  of  Descartes's  CEiivres  Choisies,  p.  145. 
s  Id.  pp.  158-164. 

*  Cartesian  professors  and  cur^s  were  persecuted  and  exiled,  or 
obli"-ed  to  recant.     Rambaud,  Hist,  de  la  civilisation  fran^aise,  6e  ^dit. 

ii,  336- 


192  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


because  of  the  anger  it  aroused.'  Himself  one  of  the  most 
abstemious  of  men,-  like  his  master  Epicurus  (of  whom 
he  wrote  a  Life,  1647),  he  attracted  disciples  of  another 
temperamental  cast  as  well  as  many  of  his  own  ;  and  as 
usual  his  system  is  associated  with  the  former,  w^ho  are 
duly  vilified  on  the  orthodox  side,  although  certainly  no 
worse  than  the  average  adherents  of  that. 

Among  his  other  practical  services  to  rationalism  was 
a  curious  experiment,  made  in  a  village  of  the  Lower 
Alps,  by  way  of  investigating  the  doctrine  of  witchcraft. 
A  drug  prepared  by  one  sorcerer  was  administered  to 
others  of  the  craft  in  presence  of  witnesses.  It  threw 
them  into  a  deep  sleep,  on  awakening  from  which  they 
declared  that  they  had  been  at  a  witches'  Sabbath.  As 
they  had  never  left  their  beds,  the  experiment  went  far 
to  discredit  the  superstition. 3  One  significant  result  of 
the  experiment  was  seen  in  the  course  taken  by  Colbert 
in  overriding  a  decision  of  the  Parlement  of  Rouen  as 
to  witchcraft  (1670).  That  Parlement  proposed  to  burn 
fourteen  sorcerers.  Colbert  ordered  that  they  should  be 
dosed  with  hellebore — a  medicine  for  brain  disturbance. '^ 
In  1672,  finally,  the  king  issued  a  declaration  forbidding 
the  tribunals  to  admit  charges  of  mere  sorcery  ;5  and  any 
future  condemnations  were  on  the  score  of  blasphemy 
and  poisoning.  Yet  further,  in  the  section  of  his 
posthumous  Syntagma  Philosophiciim  (1658)  entitled 
De  Effectibiis  Siderum,^  Gassendi  dealt  the  first  great 
blow  on  the  rationalist  side  to  the  venerable  creed  of 
astrology,  assailed  often,  but  to  little  purpose,  from  the 
side  of  faith  ;  bringing  to  his  task,  indeed,  more  asperity 
than  he  is  commonly  credited  with,  but  also  a  stringent 

'  Apparently  just  because  the  Jansenists  adopted  Descartes  and 
opposed  Gassendi.  But  Gassendi  is  extremely  guarded  in  all  his  state- 
ments, save,  indeed,  in  his  objections  to  the  Mi'ditations  of  Descartes. 

"  See  Soury,  pp.  397-8,  as  to  a  water-drinking  "  debauch  "  of  Gassendi 
and  his  friends. 

3  Rambaud,  as  cited,  p.  154. 

•t  Rambaud,  p.  155  ;   jNIichelet,  La  Sorciere. 

5  Voltaire,  Sibcle  de  Louis  XIV,  ed.  Didot,  p.  366.  "On  ne  I'eut  pas 
os*^  sous  Henri  IV  et  sous  Louis  XIII,"  adds  Voltaire. 

*  Translated  into  English  in  1659,  under  the  title  "The  Vanity  of 
Judiciary  Astrology." 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND 


193 


scientific  and  logical  method,  lacking  in  the  polemic  of 
the  churchmen,  who  had  attacked  astrology  mainly 
because  it  ignored  revelation.  It  is  sobering  to  remember, 
however,  that  he  was  one  of  those  who  could  not  assimi- 
late Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 

6.  Of  the  new  Epicureans,  the  most  famous  in  his  day 
was  Saint-Evremond,'  who,  exiled  from  France  for 
his  politics,  maintained  both  in  London  and  in  Paris,  by 
his  writings,  a  leadership  in  polite  letters.  In  England 
he  greatly  influenced  young  men  like  Bolingbroke  ;  and 
a  translation  (attributed  to  Dryden)  of  one  of  his 
writings  seems  to  have  given  Bishop  Butler  the  provo- 
cation to  the  first  and  weakest  chapter  of  his  Analogy.'^ 
As  to  his  skepticism  there  was  no  doubt  in  his  own 
day  ;  and  his  compliments  to  Christianity  are  much  on  a 
par  with  those  paid  later  by  the  equally  conforming  and 
unbelieving  Shaftesbury,  whom  he  also  anticipated  in 
his  persuasive  advocacy  of  toleration.  ^  Regnard, 
the  dramatist,  had  a  similar  private  repute  as  an 
"  Epicurean."  And  even  among  the  nominally 
orthodox  writers  of  the  time  in  France  a  subtle 
skepticism  touches  nearly  all  opinion.  La  Bruyere  is 
almost  the  only  lay  classic  of  the  period  who  is  pro- 
nouncedly religious  ;  and  his  essay  on  the  freethinkers, '^ 
against  whom  his  reasoning  is  so  forcibly  feeble,  testifies 
to  their  numbers.  Even  he,  too,  writes  as  a  deist 
against  atheists,  hardly  as  a  believing  Christian. 

His  posthumous  Dialogues  sur  le  Ouietisnie,  of  which  he  is 
credited  with  only  the  draft,  seem  to  have  been  written  to 
support  his  patron  Bossuet  in  his  dispute  with  Fenelon.  They 
are  so  weak  that  some  deny  La  Bruy^re's  authorship.  His 
personal  attitude,  however,  is  indicated  by  his  words  :  "  If  all 
religion  is  a  respectful  fear  of  God,  what  is  to  be  thought  of 
those  who  dare  to  wound  him  in  his  most  living  image,  which 
is  the  sovereign  ?  "  {Caracteres,  ed.  Didot,  1865,  p.  389). 

'  B.    1613  ;  d.    1703.     A  man  who  lived  to  ninety  can  have  been  no 
great  debauchee. 

^  Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  p.  172. 

3  Cp.  Gidel,  Ktiide  prefixed  to   CEuvres  Choisies  de  Saitit-Evremond, 
ed.  Garnier,  pp.  64-69. 

*  Caractires  (1687),  ch.  xvi  :  Les  Esprits  Forts. 

VOL.  II  O 


194  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

FoNTENELLE  (1657-1757),  whose  Conversations  on  the 
Plurality  ofWorlds  (1686)  popularised  for  the  elegant 
world  the  new  cosmology,  cannot  but  have  undermined 
dogmatic  faith  in  some  directions  ;  above  all  by  his 
graceful  and  skilful  Histoire  des  Oracles  (also  1686), 
where  "  the  argumentation  passes  beyond  the  thesis 
advanced.  All  that  he  says  of  oracles  could  be  said  of 
miracles."'  The  Jesuits  found  the  book  essentially 
"impious";  and  a  French  culture-historian  sees  in  it 
"the  first  attack  which  directs  the  scientific  spirit  against 
the  foundations  of  Christianity.  All  the  purely  philo- 
sophic arguments  with  which  religion  has  been  assailed 
are  in  principle  in  the  work  of  Fontenelle."-  Living  to 
his  hundredth  year,  he  could  join  hands  with  the  free- 
thought  of  Gassendi  and  Voltaire,  Descartes  and  Diderot. 

7.  Meanwhile  the  philosophy  of  Descartes,  if  less 
strictly  propitious  to  science  than  that  of  Gassendi,  was 
both  directly  and  indirectly  making  for  the  activity  of 
reason.  In  virtue  of  its  formal  "spiritualism,"  it  found 
access  where  any  clearly  materialistic  doctrine  would 
have  been  tabooed  ;  so  that  we  find  the  Cartesian  eccle- 
siastic Regis  not  only  eagerly  listened  to  and  acclaimed 
at  Toulouse  in  1665,  but  offered  a  civic  pension  by  the 
magistrates^ — this  within  two  years  of  the  placing  of 
Descartes's  works  on  the  Index.  After  arousing  a 
similar  enthusiasm  at  Montpellier  and  at  Paris,  Regis 
was  silenced  by  the  Archbishop,  whereupon  he  set 
himself  to  develop  the  Cartesian  philosophy  in  his  study. 
The  result  was  that  he  ultimately  went  beyond  his 
master,  openly  rejecting  the  idea  of  creation  out  of 
nothing,  +  and  finally  following  Locke  in  rejecting 
the    innate     ideas     which     Descartes     had     affirmed. ^ 

'  Lanson,  Hist,  de  la  litt.  fran^aise,  p.  627. 

-  Id.  ib.  Cp.  Demogfeot,  p.  468.  Fontenelle  was  also  credited  with  a 
heretical  letter  on  the  doctrine  of  Resurrection,  an  essay  on  the  Infinite, 
and  a  Traits  mir  la  Liberty,  all  pointing'  to  unbelief.  As  the  Histoire  des 
Oracles  was  itself  anonymous,  the  question  remains  open. 

3  Fontenelle,  Eloge  sur  Ri'gis  ;  Bouillier,  Philos.  cartels,  i,  507. 

■•  Rdpotise  to  Huet's  Censiira  pliilosophiie  cartes.  1691  ;   Bouillier,  i,  515. 

s  Usage  de  la  raison  et  de  la  foi,  1704,  liv.  i,  ptie.  i,  ch.  7  ;  Bouillier, 
p.  511. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  195 

Another  young  churchman,  Desgabets,  developing 
from  Descartes  and  his  pupil  Malebranche,  combined 
with  their  "  spiritist "  doctrine  much  of  the  virtual 
materialism  of  Gassendi,  arriving  at  a  kind  of  pantheism, 
and  at  a  courageous  pantheistic  ethic,  wherein  God  is 
recognised  as  the  author  alike  of  good  and  evil' — a 
doctrine  which  we  find  even  getting  a  hearing  in 
general  society,  and  noticed  in  the  correspondence  of 
Madame  de  Sevigne  in  1677.''  And  while  an  evolving 
Cartesianism  was  thus  reacting  on  thought  in  all 
directions,  the  primary  and  proper  impulse  of  Descartes 
was  doing  on  the  Continent  what  that  of  Bacon  was 
doing  in  England — setting  men  on  actual  scientific 
observation  and  experiment,  and  turning  them  from 
traditionalism  of  every  kind.  Some  of  the  school,  as 
Malebranche,  set  their  faces  almost  fanatically  against 
erudition,  thus  making  an  enemy  of  the  all-learned 
Huet,3  but  on  the  other  hand  preparing  the  way  for  the 
scientific  age.  For  the  rest  we  find  the  influence  of 
Descartes  at  work  in  heresies  at  which  he  had  not 
hinted.  One  of  the  first  of  the  orthodox  objections  to 
his  philosophy  was  that  it  was  irreconcilable  with  the 
miracle  of  the  eucharist  ;  and,  as  this  was  continually 
urged,  Cartesianism  tended  at  this  point  to  be 
rationalistic  even  in  spite  of  itself.  Finally  we  shall  see 
it  in  Holland,  where  it  took  deep  root,  furthering  a 
rationalistic  treatment  of  the  Bible  and  of  popular  super- 
stitions. 

8.  Yet  another  new  departure  was  made  in  the  France 
of  Louis  XIV  by  the  scholarly  performance  of  Richard 
Simon  (1638-17 12),  who  was  as  regards  the  Scriptural 
texts  what  Spencer  of  Cambridge  was  as  regards  the 
culture-history  of  the  Hebrews,  one  of  the  founders  of 
modern  methodical  criticism.  The  congregation  of  the 
Oratory,  where  Simon  laid  the  foundations  of  his 
learning,  was  so  little  inclined  to  his  critical  views  that 

'  Bouillier,  i,  521-5. 

-  Lettre  de  10  aout,  1677,  No.  591,  ed.  Nodier. 

3  Bouillier,  i,  582,  588-90. 


1 96  HI  ODER  N  E  U ROPE  A  N  FREETHO  UGHT 

he  decided  to  leave  it,  and  though  persuaded  to  stay, 
and  to  become  for  a  time  a  professor  of  philosophy 
at  Julli,  he  at  length  broke  with  the  Order.  Then, 
from  his  native  town  of  Dieppe,  came  his  strenuous 
series  of  critical  works — L'liistoire  critique  dit  Vieux 
Testament  (1678),  which  among  other  things  decisively 
impugned  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch  ; 
the  Histoire  critique  du  texte  dii  Noiiveau  Testament 
(Rotterdam,  1689)  ;  numerous  other  volumes  of  critical 
studies  on  texts,  versions,  and  commentators ;  and 
finally  a  French  translation  of  the  New  Testament  with 
notes.  His  Bibliotlieque  Critique  (4  vols,  under  the 
name  of  Saint-Jarre)  was  suppressed  by  an  order  in 
council  ;  the  translation  was  condemned  by  Bossuet  and 
the  Archbishop  of  Paris  ;  and  the  two  first-named  works 
were  suppressed  by  the  Parlement  of  Paris  and  attacked 
by  a  host  of  orthodox  scholars  ;  but  they  were  translated 
promptly  into  Latin  and  English  ;  and  they  gave  a  new 
breadth  of  footing  to  the  deistic  argument,  though 
Simon  always  wrote  as  an  avowed  believer. 

Before  Simon,  the  Protestant  Isaac  la  Peyrere,  the 
friend  of  La  Mothe  le  Vayer  and  Gassendi,  and  the 
librarian  of  Conde,  had  fired  a  somewhat  startling  shot 
at  the  Pentateuch  in  his  Prccadamitcc''  and  Systema 
Tlieologica  ex  Prce-adamitarum  HypotJiesi  (both  1655  : 
printed  in  Holland"),  for  which  he  was  imprisoned  at 
Brussels,  with  the  result  that  he  recanted  and  joined  the 
Church  of  Rome,  going  to  the  Pope  in  person  to  receive 
absolution,  and  publishing  an  Epistola  ad  Philotimnm 
(Frankfort,  1658),  in  which  he  professed  to  explain  his 
reasons  for  abjuring  at  once  his  Calvinism  and  his 
treatise.  It  is  clear  that  all  this  was  done  to  save  his 
skin,  for  there   is  explicit  testimony  that  he  held  firmly 


'  Pneadainitcc,  si^'e  Exercilatio  super  versibiis  12,  ij,  i^  cap.  5,  Epist. 
D.  Pauli  ad  Ruiitanus,  Ouibus  inducuntur  Prinii  Homines  ante  Adam um 
co)iditi.  The  notion  ot  a  pre-Adamite  human  race,  as  we  saw,  had  been 
held  by  Bruno.     (Above,  p.  66.) 

-  My  copies  of  the  Pncadamita  and  Systema  bear  no  place-imprint,  but 
simply  "Anno  Salutis  JNIDCLV."  They  seem  to  have  been  at  once 
reprinted  in  i2mo. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND 


197 


by  his  Preadamite  doctrine  to  the  end  of  his  life,  despite 
the  seven  or  eight  confutations  of  his  work  published  in 
1656.'  Were  it  not  for  his  constructive  theses — espe- 
cially his  idea  that  Adam  was  a  real  person,  but  simply 
the  father  of  the  Hebrews  and  not  of  the  human  race — 
he  would  deserve  to  rank  high  among  the  scientific 
pioneers  of  modern  rationalism,  for  his  negative  work  is 
shrewd  and  sound.  Like  so  many  other  early  rationalists, 
collectively  accused  of  "  destroying  without  replacing," 
he  erred  precisely  in  his  eagerness  to  build  up,  for  his 
negations  have  all  become  accepted  truths.-  As  it  is, 
he  may  be  ranked,  after  Toland,  as  a  main  founder  of 
the  older  rationalism,  developed  chiefly  in  Germany, 
which  sought  to  reduce  as  many  miracles  as  possible  to 
natural  events  misunderstood.  But  he  was  too  far 
before  his  time  to  win  a  fair  hearing.  Where  Simon  laid 
a  cautious  scholarly  foundation,  Peyrere  challenged 
immemorial  beliefs,  and  failed  accordingly. 

9.  Such  an  evolution  could  not  occur  in  France  without 
affecting  the  neighbouring  civilisation  of  Holland.  We 
have  seen  Dutch  life  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century  full  of  Protestant  fanaticism  and  sectarian  strife  ; 
and  in  the  time  of  Descartes  these  elements,  especially 
on  the  Calvinist  side,  were  strong  enough  virtually  to 
drive  him  out  of  Holland  (1647)  after  nineteen  years' 
residence.3  He  had,  however,  made  disciples  ;  and  his 
doctrine  bore  fruit,  finding  doubtless  some  old  soil  ready. 
Thus  in  1666  one  of  his  disciples,  the  Amsterdam  physi- 
cian Louis  Meyer,  published  a  treatise  entitled  Pliilo- 
sophia    Sacrae   Scriptnrae    Interpres,^    in    which,    after 

'  Bayle,  Dictionnaire,  art.  Pevrere.  A  correspondent  of  Bayle's 
concludes  his  account  of  "le  Prt^adamite  "  thus:  "  Le  Pereire  t^toit  le 
meilleur  homme  du  monde,  le  plus  doux,  et  qui  tranquillement  croyoit 
fort  peu  de  chose." 

-  See  the  account  of  his  book  b)-  Mr.  Lecky,  RationaUs)n  in  Europe, 
i,  295-7.  Rejecting;  as  he  did  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch, 
he  ranks  with  Hobbes  and  Spinoza  among- the  pioneers  of  true  criticism. 
Indeed,  as  his  book  seems  to  have  been  in  MS.  in  1645,  he  may  precede 
Hobbes. 

2  Kuno  Fischer,  Descartes  and  his  School,  pp.  254-26S. 

•»  Colerus  {i.e.,  Kohler),  F/t'  de  Spinoza,  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  the  Opera, 
pp.  xlv-xlvii. 


1 98  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

formally  affirming  that  the  Scripture  is  the  infallible 
Word  of  God,  he  proceeds  to  argue  that  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Word  must  be  made  by  the  human  reason, 
and  accordingly  sets  aside  all  meanings  which  are  irre- 
concilable therewith,  reducing  them  to  allegories  or 
tropes.  As  Meyer  was  one  of  the  most  intimate  friends 
of  Spinoza,  being  with  him  at  death,  and  becoming  the 
editor  of  his  posthumous  works,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  his  treatise,  which  preceded  Spinoza's  Tractatiis  by 
four  years,  influenced  the  great  Jew,  who  speedily 
eclipsed  him/ 

Spinoza,  however  (1632-1677),  was  first  led  to  ratio- 
nalise by  his  Amsterdam  friend  and  teacher.  Van  den 
Ende,  a  scientific  materialist,  hostile  to  all  religion  ;^ 
and  it  was  while  under  his  influence  that  he  was  excom- 
municated by  his  father's  synagogue.  From  the  first, 
apparently,  Spinoza's  thought  was  shaped  partly  by  the 
medieval  Hebrew  philosophy^  (which,  as  we  have  seen, 
combined  Aristotelian  and  Saracen  influences),  partly  by 
the  teaching  of  Bruno,  though  he  modified  and  cor- 
rected that  at  various  points.'*  Later  he  was  deeply 
influenced  by  Descartes,  whom  he  specially  expounded 
for  a  pupil  in  a  tractate. ^  Here  he  endorses  Descartes's 
doctrine  of  freewill,  which  he  was  later  to  repudiate  and 
overthrow.  But  he  drew  from  Descartes  his  retained 
principle  that  evil  is  not  a  real  existence.  In  a  much 
less  degree  he  was  influenced  by  Bacon,  whose  psycho- 
logy he  ultimately  condemned  ;  but  from  Hobbes  he 
took  not  only  his  rationalistic  attitude  towards  "  revela- 
tion "   but  his  doctrine  of  ecclesiastical   subordination.^ 


'  Cp.  Bouillier,  i,  293-4. 

-  Colerus,  Vie  de  Spinosa,  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  Opera,  p.  xxv;  Martineau, 
Study  of  Spinoza,  1882,  pp.  20-22  ;  Willis,  Spinoza,  1870,  pp.  37,  79. 

3  As  set  forth  by  Joel,  Bcitriigc  ziir  Gescli.  der  Philos.,  Breslau,  1876. 
See  citations  in  Land's  note  to  his  lecture  in  Spinoza :  Four  Essays, 
1882,  pp.  51-53. 

••  Land,  "  Li  Memory  of  Spinoza,"  in  Spinoza  :  Four  Essays,  pp.  57-58; 
Sigvvart,  as  there  cited  ;  Willis,  Spinoza,  1870,  g-en.  introd.  pp.  x,  xi. 
Cp.  however,  Martineau,  Study  of  Spinoza,  p.  loi,  tiote. 

5  Renati  Des  Cartes  Princip.  Pliilos.  more  geometrico  demonstrata, 
1663. 

^  Cp.  Martineau,  pp.  46,  57. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  199 

Finally  evolving  his  own  conceptions,  he  produced  a 
philosophic  system  which  was  destined  to  affect  all 
European  thought,  remaining  the  while  quietly  occu- 
pied with  the  handicraft  of  lens-grinding  by  which  he 
earned  his  livelihood.  The  Grand  Pensionary  of  the 
Netherlands;  John  de  Witt,  seems  to  have  been  in  full 
sympathy  with  the  young  heretic,  on  whom  he  conferred 
a  small  pension  before  he  had  published  anything  save 
his  Cartesian  Principta  (1663). 

The  much  more  daring  and  powerful  Tractatiis 
Theologico-Politicus  (1670')  was  promptly  condemned  by 
a  Dutch  clerical  synod,  along  with  Hobbes's  Leviathan, 
which  it  greatly  surpassed  in  the  matter  of  criticism  of 
the  scriptural  text.  It  was  the  most  stringent  censure  of 
supernaturalism  that  had  thus  far  appeared  in  any 
modern  language  ;  and  its  preface  is  an  even  more 
mordant  attack  on  popular  religion  and  clericalism  than 
the  main  body  of  the  work.  What  seems  to-day  an  odd 
compromise — -the  reservation  of  supra-rational  authority 
for  revelation,  alongside  of  unqualified  claims  for  the 
freedom  of  reason- — was  but  an  adaptation  of  the  old 
scholastic  formula  of  "twofold  truth,"  and  was  perhaps 
at  the  time  the  possible  maximum  of  rationalism  in 
regard  to  the  current  creed,  since  both  Bacon  and  Locke, 
as  we  have  seen,  were  fain  to  resort  to  it.  As  revealed 
in  his  letters,  Spinoza  in  almost  all  things  stood  at  the 
point  of  view  of  the  cultivated  rationalism  of  two 
centuries  later.  He  believed  in  a  historical  Jesus, 
rejecting  the  Resurrection  ;3  disbelieved  in  ghosts  and 
spirits  I'*  rejected  miracles  •,'"  and  refused  to  think  of 
God  as  ever  angry  ;*"  avowing  that  he  could  not  under- 
stand the  Scriptures,  and  had  been  able  to  learn  nothing 
from  them  as  to  God's  attributes.^  The  Tractatiis  could 
not  go  so  far  ;  but  it  went  far  enough  to  horrify  many 
who  counted  themselves  latitudinarian.     It  was  only  in 

'  Reprinted   in    1674,  without  place-name,  and   with  the  imprint  of  an 
imaginary  Hamburg-  publisher. 

^    Tractatiis,  c.  15.  3  Ep.  xxiv,  to  Oldenburg. 

■*  Epp.  Iviii,  Ix,  to  Boxel.  =  Ep.  xxiii,  to  Oldenburg. 

*  Ep.  xxiv.  7  Ep.  xxxiv,  to  W.  van  Bleyenberg. 


y 


200  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Holland  that  so  aggressive  a  criticism  of  Christian  faith 
and  practice  could  then  appear  ;  and  even  there  neither 
publisher  nor  author  dared  avow  himself.  Spinoza  even 
vetoed  a  translation  into  Dutch,  foreseeing  that  such  a 
book  would  be  placed  under  an  interdict.'  It  \vas  as 
much  an  appeal  for  freedom  of  thought  {libertas  philo- 
sophaiidi)  as  a  demonstration  of  rational  truth  ;  and 
Spinoza  dexterously  pointed  (c.  20)  to  the  social  effects 
of  the  religious  liberty  already  enjoyed  in  Amsterdam 
as  a  reason  for  carrying  liberty  further.  There  can  be 
no  question  that  it  powerfully  furthered  alike  the  deistic 
and  the  Unitarian  movements  in  England  from  the  year 
of  its  appearance  ;  and,  though  the  States-General  felt 
bound  formally  to  prohibit  it  on  the  issue  of  the  second 
edition  in  1674,  ^^^  effect  in  Holland  was  probably  as 
great  as  elsewhere:  at  least  there  seems  to  have  gone 
on  there  from  this  time  a  rapid  modification  of  the  old 
orthodoxy. 

Still  more  profound,  probably,  was  the  effect  of  the 
posthumous  Ethica  (1677),  which  he  had  been  prevented 
from  publishing  in  his  lifetime,-  and  which  not  only 
propounded  in  parts  an  absolute  pantheism  (=atheism3), 
but  definitely  grounded  ethics  in  human  nature.  If 
more  were  needed  to  arouse  theological  rage,  it  was  to 
be  found  in  the  repeated  and  insistent  criticism  of  the 
moral  and  mental  perversity  of  the  defenders  of  the 
faith  + — a  position  not  indeed  quite  consistent  with  the 
primary  teaching  of  the  treatise  on  the  subject  of  Will, 
of  which  it  denies  the  entity  in  the  ordinary  sense. 
Spinoza  was  here  reverting  to  the  practical  attitude  of 
Bacon,  which,  under  a  partial  misconception,  he  had 
repudiated  ;  and  he  did  not  formally  solve  the  contra- 
diction. His  purpose  was  to  confute  the  ordinary 
orthodox  dogma  that  unbelief  is  wilful  sin  ;  and  to  retort 

'   Ep.  xlvii,  to  Jellis,  Feb.,  167 1. 

^  Ep.  xix,  1675,  to  Oldenburg-. 

3  "  Spinozism  is  atheistic,  and  has  no  valid  ground  for  retaining  the 
word  '  God  '"  (Martineau,  p.  349). 

"  Ethica,  P.  i,  App. ;  P.  ii,  end  ;  P.  v,  prop.  41,  schol.  Cp.  the  Letters, 
passim. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  201 

the  charge  without  reconciling  it  with  the  thesis  was  to 
impair  the  philosophic  argument.'  It  was  not  on  that 
score,  however,  that  it  was  resented,  but  as  an  unpardon- 
able attack  on  orthodoxy,  not  to  be  atoned  for  by  any 
words  about  the  spirit  of  Christ.-  The  discussion  went 
deep  and  far.  A  reply  to  the  Tractatus  which  appeared 
in  1674,  by  an  Utrecht  professor  (then  dead),  is  spoken 
of  by  Spinoza  with  contempt  ;^  but  abler  discussion 
followed,  though  the  assailants  mostly  fell  foul  of  each 
other.  Franz  Cuper  or  Kuyper  of  Amsterdam,  who  in 
1676  published  an  Arcana  Atheismi Revelata^  professedly 
refuting  Spinoza's  Tractatus^  was  charged  with  writing 
in  bad  faith  and  with  being  on  Spinoza's  side — an 
accusation  which  he  promptly  retorted  on  other  critics, 
apparently  with  justice."^ 

10.  The  appearance  in  1678  of  a  Dutch  treatise  "  against 
all  sorts  of  atheists, "^  and  in  1681,  at  Amsterdam,  of 
an  attack  in  French  on  Spinoza's  Scriptural  criticism,^ 
points  to  a  movement  outside  of  the  clerical  and  scholarly 
class.  All  along,  indeed,  the  atmosphere  of  the  Arminian 
or  "  Remonstrant  "  School  in  Holland  must  have  been 
fairly  liberal."  Already  in  1685  Locke's  friend  Le  Clerc 
had  taken  up  the  position  of  Hobbes  and  Spinoza  and 
Simon  on  the  Pentateuch  in  his  Sentimens  de  qiielqiies 

'  The  solution  is,  of  course,  that  the  attitude  of  the  will  in  the  forming' 
of  opinion  may  or  may  not  be  passionally  perverse,  in  the  sense  of  beingf 
inconsistent.  To  show  that  it  is  inconsistent  may  be  a  means  of 
enlightening-  it  ;  and  an  aspersion  to  that  effect  may  be  medicinal. 
Spinoza  might  trulj'  have  said  that  passional  perversity  was  at  least  as 
common  on  the  orthodox  side  as  on  the  other.  In  any  case,  he  quashes 
his  own  criticism  of  Bacon. 

-  P.  iv,  prop.  68,  schol. 

3  Ep.  1  ;  1  June,  1674. 

*•  Colerus,  as  cited,  p.  liv.  Cuper  appears  to  have  been  genuinely  anti- 
Spinozist,  while  his  opponent,  Breitburg,  or  Bredenburg,  of  Rotterdam, 
ivas  a  Spinozist.  Both  were  members  of  the  society  of  "  Collegiants," 
a  body  of  non-dogmatic  Christians,  which  for  a  time  was  broken  up 
through  their  dissensions.  Mosheim,  17  Cent.  sec.  ii,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  vii,  §  2, 
and  note. 

5  T/ieoIogisch,  Philosophisch,  en  Historisch  process  voor  God,  tegen 
allerley  Atheisten.     By  Francis  Ridder,  Rotterdam,  1678. 

*  L Impiitii  Convaittcit,  "par  Pierre  Yvon,"  Amsterdam,  1681.  Really 
by  the  Sieur  Aubert  de  V'ers^. 

'  See  Fox  Bourne's  Life  of  Locke,  ii,  282-3,  as  to  Locke's  friendly 
relations  with  the  Remonstrants  in  1683-9. 


202  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


theologiens  de  Hollande  (translated  into  English  and 
published  in  1690  as  "  Five  Letters  Concerning  the 
Inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  ").  And  although 
Le  Clerc  always  remained  something  of  a  Scripturalist^ 
and  refused  to  ^o  the  way  of  Spinoza,  he  had  courage 
enough  to  revive  an  ancient  heresy  by  urging,  in  his 
commentary  on  the  fourth  Gospel  (1701),  that  "the  Logos  '* 
should  be  rendered  "  Reason."  A  rationalising  spirit 
now  began  to  spread  widely  in  Holland  ;  and  within 
twenty  years  of  Spinoza^s  death  there  had  arisen  a 
Dutch  sect,  led  by  Pontiaan  van  Hattem,  a  pastor  at 
Philipsland,  which  blendedSpinozism  with  evangelicalism 
in  such  a  way  as  to  incur  the  anathema  of  the  Church.' 
In  the  time  of  the  English  Civil  War,  the  fear  of  the 
opponents  of  the  new  multitude  of  sects  was  that 
England  should  become  "  another  Amsterdam."-  This 
very  multiplicity  tended  to  promote  doubt  :  and  in  17 13 
we  find  Anthony  Collins^  pointing  to  Holland  as  a 
country  where  freedom  to  think  has  undermined  super- 
stition to  a  remarkable  degree.  During  his  stay,  in  the 
previous  generation,  Locke  had  found  a  measure  of 
liberal  theology,  in  harmony  with  his  own  ;  but  in  those 
days  downright  heresy  was  still  dangerous.  Deurhoff 
(d.  1717),  who  translated  Descartes  and  was  accused  of 
Spinozism,  though  he  strongly  attacked  it,-*  had  at  one 
time  to  fly  Holland,  though  by  his  writings  he  founded  a 
pantheistic  sect  known  as  Deurhovians  ;  and  Balthasar 
Bekker,  a  Cartesian,  persecuted  first  for  Socinianism, 
incurred  so  much  odium  by  publishing  in  1691  a  treatise 
denying  the  reality  of  witchcraft  that  he  had  to  giv^e  up 
his  office  as  a  preacher. 

Cp.   art.    in  Biographie   UniverscUe,  and  Mosheim,  17  Cent. 
Pt.  ii,  ch.  ii,  ^  35,  and  notes  in  Reid's  ed.      Bekker  was  not  tlie 

'  Mosheim,  Reid's  ed.  p.  836  ;  Martineau,  pp.  327-8.  The  first  JNIS. 
of  the  treatise  of  Spinoza  De  Deo  et  Hoinijie,  found  and  published  in  the 
nineteenth  centurv,  bore  a  note  which  showed  it  to  have  been  used  by  a 
sect  of  Christian  Spinozists.  See  Janet's  ed.  1878,  p.  3.  They  altered 
the  text,  putting-  "faith"  for  "opinion."     Id.  p.  53,  notes. 

-  Edwards,  Gangrcejia,  as  before  cited. 

3  Discourse  of  Freethinkiiig,  p.  28. 

"•  Colerus,  as  cited,  p.  Iviii. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  203 

first  to  combat  deinonolog'y  on  scriptural  grounds  ;  Arnold 
Geulincx,  ofLeyden,and  the  Frencli  Protestant  refugee  Daillon 
liaving  less  confidently  put  the  view  before  him,  the  latter  in 
his  Daimonologia,  1687  (trans,  in  English,  1723),  and  the  former 
in  his  system  of  ethics.  Gassendi,  as  we  saw,  had  notably 
discredited  witchcraft  a  generation  earlier  ;  Reginald  Scot  had 
impugned  its  actuality  in  1584  ;  and  Wier,  still  earlier,  in  1583. 
And  even  before  the  Reformation  the  learned  King  Christian  II. 
of  Denmark  (deposed  1523)  had  vetoed  witch-burning  in  his 
dominions.  (Allen,  Hist,  de  Danemark,  French  trans.  1878,  i, 
281.)  As  Scot's  Discovcrie  had  been  translated  into  Dutch  in 
1609,  Bekker  probably  had  a  lead  from  him.  Glanvil's  Blo7V  at 
Modern  Sadducisin  (1688),  reproduced  in  Sadducismus  Trium- 
phatusy  undertakes  to  answer  some  objections  of  the  kind  later 
urged  by  Bekker  ;  and  the  discussion  was  practically  inter- 
national. Bekker's  treatise,  en\\i\Qd  De  Betooverte  Wet-eld,  was 
translated  into  English — first  in  1695,  from  the  French,  under 
the  title  The  World  Beivitched  (only  i  vol.  published),  and 
again  in  1700  as  The  World  turned  upside  dozvn.  In  the  French 
translation,  Le  Monde  Enchante  (4  torn.  1694),  it  had  a  great 
vogue.  A  refutation  was  published  in  English  in  An  historical 
treatise  of  spirits,  by  J.  Beaumont,  in  1705.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  Bekker  was  Included  as  one  of  "  four  modern  sages  {vier 
neuer  Welt-Weisen)''  with  Descartes,  Hobbes,  and  Spinoza,  in 
a  German  folio  tractate  (hostile)  of  1702. 

In  1708  there  was  published  at  Amsterdam  a  more 
startling  work,  under  the  pseudonym  of  "  Juan  di  Posos," 
wherein,  by  way  of  a  relation  of  imaginary  travels, 
something  like  atheism  was  said  to  be  taught ;  but  the 
pastor  Leenhof  had  in  1703  been  accused  of  atheism  for 
his  treatise.  Heaven  on  Earthy  which  was  at  most 
Spinozistic'  Even  as  late  as  17 14  a  Spinozist  shoe- 
maker, Booms,  was  banished  for  his  writings  ;  but 
henceforth  liberal  influences,  largely  traceable  to  the 
works  of  Bayle,  begin  to  predominate. 

II.  No  greater  service  was  rendered  in  that  age  to 
the  spread  of  rational  views  than  that  embodied  in  the 
gvQSiX.  Dictionnaire  of  Pierre  Bayle  (1647-1706),  who, 
born  in  France,  but  driven  out  by  the  revocation  of  the 
Edict  of  Nantes,  spent  the  best  part  of  his  life  and  did 
his   main   work  at  Rotterdam.      Persecuted  there  to  the 

'  Cp.  Trinius,  Freydenker-Lexicon ,  pp.  336-7;    Colerus,  as  cited,  p.  Iviii. 


204  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

extent  of  having  to  give  up  his  professorship,  he  yet 
produced  a  virtual  encyclopedia  for  freethinkers  in  his 
incomparable  Dictionary,  baffling  hostility  by  the 
Pyrrho.nian  impartiality  with  which  he  handled  all 
religious  questions.  In  his  youth,  when  sent  by  his 
Protestant  father  to  study  at  Toulouse,  he  had  been 
temporarily  converted,  as  was  the  young  Gibbon  later, 
to  Catholicism  ;'  and  the  retrospect  of  that  experience 
seems  in  Bayle's  case,  as  in  Gibbon's,  to  have  been  a 
permanent  motive  to  practical  skepticism.^  But,  again, 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  skepticism  was  fortified 
by  abundant  knowledge.  Bayle  had  read  everything 
and  mastered  every  controversy,  and  was  thereby  the 
better  able  to  seem  to  have  no  convictions  of  his  own. 
But  even  apart  from  the  notable  defences  of  the  character 
of  atheists  dropped  by  him  in  \h^iz.vs\o\xs  Pensees  dvuerses 
sur  la  Comete  (1682),  and  in  the  Eclaircissenients  in 
which  he  defended  it,  it  is  abundantly  evident  that  he 
was  an  unbeliever.  The  only  alternative  view  is  that 
he  was  strictly  or  philosophically  a  skeptic,  reaching  no 
conclusions  for  himself;  but  this  is  excluded  by  the 
whole  management  of  his  expositions.-^  His  ostensible 
Pyrrhonism  was  simply  the  tactic  forced  oh  him  by  his 
conditions  ;  and  it  was  the  positive  unbelievers  who 
specially  delighted  in  his  volumes.  He  laid  down  no 
cosmic  doctrines,  but  he  illuminated  all  ;  and  his  air  of 
repudiating  such  views  as  Spinoza's  had  the  effect  rather 
of  forcing  Spinozists  to  leave  neutral  ground  than  of 
rehabilitating  orthodoxy. 

On  one  theme  he  spoke  without    any  semblance    of 


'  Albert  Cazes,  Pierre  Bayle,  sa  vie,  ses  idJes,  son  iiijluence,  son  cpt(vre, 
1905,  pp.  6,  7. 

-  A  movement  of  skepticism  had  probably  been  first  set  up  in  the 
}-oung-  Bayle  by  Montaig-ne,  who  was  one  of  his  favourite  authors  before 
his  conversion  (Cazes,  p.  5).  Montaigne,  it  will  be  remembered,  had 
been  a  fanatic  in  his  youth.  Thus  three  typical  skeptics  of  the  sixteenth, 
seventeenth,  and  eig-hteenth  centuries  had  known  what  it  was  to  be 
Catholic  believers. 

3  Cp.  the  essay  on  The  Skepticism  of  Bayle  in  Sir  J.  F.  Stephen's 
Horce  Sabbaticce,  vol.  iii,  and  the  remarks  of  Perrens,  Les  Libertins,  pp. 
331-7- 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  aoj 

doubt.     Above  all  men  who   had  yet  written  he  is  the 
champion  of  toleration.'     At  a  time  when   in  England 
the  school  of  Locke  still  held  that  atheism   must  not  be 
tolerated,   he  would  accept  no  such  position,   insisting 
that  error  as  such  is  not  culpable,  and  that,  save  in  the 
case  of  a  sect  positively  inciting  to  violence  and  disorder, 
all  punishment  of  opinion  is  irrational  and  unjust.^     On 
this  theme,   moved  by  the   memory  of  his  own   life  of 
exile  and  the  atrocious  persecution  of  the  Protestants  of 
France,   he   lost  his  normal  imperturbability,  as  in  his 
Letter  to  an  Abbe,  entitled    Ce  que  c'est  que  la  France 
toute   catholiqiie    sous   le    regne  de  Louis  le   Grand,   in 
which  a  controlled  passion  of  accusation   makes    every 
sentence    bite    like   an    acid,   leaving    a    mark    that    no 
dialectic  can  efface.     But  it  was  not  only  from  Catholicism 
that   he   suffered,    and   not   only  to    Catholics   that   his 
message  was  addressed.     One  of   his   most  malignant 
enemies   was    the    Protestant   Jurieu,    who   it   was   that 
succeeded    in    having    him    deprived    of    his    chair    of 
philosophy  and   history  at   Rotterdam,   on   the  score  of 
the   freethinking   of   his   Pensees  sur  la    Comete.     But 
nothing  could  deprive  him  of  his  literary  vogue,  which 
was   in  the    ratio  of  his    unparalleled    industry.     As  a 
mere  writer  he  is  admirable  :  save  in  point  of  sheer  wit, 
of  which,  however,  he  has  not  a  little,  he  is  to  this   day 
as  readable  as  Voltaire.     By  force  of  unfailing  lucidity, 
wisdom,    and    knowledge,    he    made     the    conquest    of 
literary  Europe  ;  and  fifty  years  after  his  death  we  find 
the    Jesuit    Delamare    in     his   (anonymous)   apologetic 
treatise.  La  Foi  justifiee  de  tout  reproche  de  contradiction 
avec  la  raison  (1761),  speaking  of  him  to  the  deists  as 
"  their  theologian,  their  doctor,   their  oracle. "^     He  was 
indeed  no  less  ;  and  his  serene  exposure  of  the  historic 
failure  of  Christianity  was  all  the  more  deadly  as  coming 
from  a  master  of  theological  history. 

'  Dictionnaire,  art.  Mahomet,  §  ix  ;  art.  Conecte  ;  art.  Simonide, 
notes  H  and  G  ;  art.  Sponde,  note  C. 

^  Commeiitaire  philosophique  sur  la  paraholc :  Contrains-les  d'enfrer, 
2e  ptie,  vi.  Cp.  the  Critique ghiirale  de  I'histoire  du  Calvinisme  du  Pere 
Maimbourg.  3  Ed.  1766,  p.  7. 


2o6  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


12.  Welcomed  by  students  everywhere,  Bayle  must 
have  made  powerfully  for  tolerance  and  rationalism  in 
his  adopted  country,  which  after  his  time  became  a 
centre  of  culture  for  the  States  of  northern  Europe 
rather  than  a  source  of  original  works.  Holland  in  the 
eighteenth  century  was  receptive  alike  of  French  and 
English  thought  and  literature,  especially  the  former;' 
and,  besides  reprinting  many  of  the  French  deists' works 
and  translating  some  of  the  English,  the  Dutch  cities 
harboured  such  heretics  as" the  Italian  Alberto  Radicati, 
Count  Passerano,  who,  dying  at  Rotterdam  in  1736, 
left  a  collection  of  deistic  treatises  of  a  strongly  free- 
thinking  cast  to  be  posthumously  published. 

The  German  traveller  Alberti,-  citing  the  London 
Magazine^  1732,  states  that  Passerano  visited  England 
and  published  works  in  English  through  a  translator, 
Joseph  Morgan,  and  that  both  were  sentenced  to 
imprisonment.  This  presumably  refers  to  his  anony- 
mous Philosophical  Dissertation  upon-  Deaths  "  by  a 
friend  to  truth,"  published  in  English  in  1732.  It  is  a 
remarkable  treatise,  being  a  hardy  justification  of  suicide, 
"  composed  for  the  consolation  of  the  unhappy,"  from  a 
practically  atheistic  standpoint.  Two  years  earlier  he 
had  published  in  English,  also  anonymously,  a  tract 
entitled  Christianity  set  in  a  True  Lights  by  a  Pagan 
Philosopher  newly  converted;  and  it  may  be  that  the 
startling  nature  of  the  second  pamphlet  elicited  a  prose- 
cution which  included  both.  The  pamphlet  of  1730, 
however,  is  a  eulogy  of  the  ethic  of  Jesus,  Avho  is 
deistically  treated  as  a  simple  man,  but  with  all  the 
amenity  which  the  deists  usually  brought  to  bear  on 
that  theme.  His  Recueil  des  pieces  curieuses  sur  les 
matieres  les  plus  interessants,  published  with  his  name 
at  Rotterdam  in  1736,3  includes  a  translation  of  Swift's 
ironical    Project   concerning    babies,    and    an    Histoire 

'  See  Texte,  Rousseau  and  the  Cosmopolitan  Spirit,  Eng.  trans,  p.  29. 
'-  Briefe,  1752,  p.  451. 

3  Reprinted,  in   French,  at   London   in    1749,  in  a  more  complete  and 
correct  edition,  published  by  J.  Brindley. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  207 


abregee  de  la  profession  sacerdotale,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  a  separate  English  translation."  Passerano  is 
noticeable  chiefly  for  the  relative  thoroughness  of  his 
rationalism.  In  the  Reciieil  he  speaks  of  deists  and 
atheists  as  being  the  same,  those  called  atheists  having 
always  admitted  a  first  cause  under  the  names  God, 
Nature,  Eternal  Germs,  movement,  or  universal  soul.^ 

In  1737  was  published  in  French  a  small  mystification  con- 
sisting; of  a  Sermon  prcche  dans  la  gra^ide  Assemhlee  dcs  Quakers 
dc  Londres,  par  la  fameux  Frere  E.  E.,  and  another  little  tract, 
La  Religion  Miihainedane  coinparee  a  la  pa'ienne  de  V Indostan, 
par  Ali-Ebn-Omar.  "  E.  E."  stood  for  Edward  Elwall,  a  well- 
known  Unitarian  of  the  time,  who  in  1742  published  a  treatise 
entitled  The  Supernatural  Incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ  proved  to 

he  false and  that  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  was  the  real  son  of 

Joseph  and  Mary,  and  had  been  in  1726  tried  at  Stafford  Assizes. 
The  two  tracts  are  both  by  Passerano,  and  are  on  deistic  lines, 
the  text  of  the  Sermon  being  (in  English)  "The  Religion  of  the 
Gospel  is  the  true  Original  Religion  of  Reason  and  Nature." 
The  proposition  is  of  course  purely  ethical  in  its  bearing. 

The  hospitality  given  in  Holland  to  such  literature 
tells  of  growing  liberality  of  thought  as  well  as  of 
political  freedom.  But  the  conditions  were  not  favour- 
able to  such  general  literary  activity  as  prevailed  in  the 
larger  States,  though  good  work  was  done  in  medicine 
and  the  natural  sciences.  Not  till  the  nineteenth  century 
did  Dutch  scholars  again  give  an  original  lead  to  Europe 
in  religious  thought. 

13.  Meantime,  Spinoza  had  reinforced  the  critical 
movement  in  France, ^  where  the  later  policy  of  Louis 
XIV  sought  as  far  as  possible  to  extinguish  freedom  of 
thought.     The  crowning  Catholic  blunder  and  crime  of 

'  The  copy  in  the  British  Museum  is  dated  1737,  and  the  title-page 
describes  Passerano  as  "a  Piemontaese  exile  no-iv  in  Holland,  a  Christian 
Freethinker."     It  is  presumably  a  re-issue. 

-  London  ed.  1749,  pp.  24-25. 

3  The  Tractatus  Theologico-Politicus  had  been  translated  into  French 
in  1678  by  Saint-Glain,  a  Protestant,  who  gave  it  no  fewer  than  three 
other  titles  in  succession  to  evade  prosecution.  (Note  to  Colerus  in 
Gfrdrer's  ed.  of  Spinoza,  p.  xlix. )  In  addition  to  the  work  of  Aubert  de 
Vers^,  above  mentioned,  replies  were  published  by  Simon,  De  la  Motte 
(minister  of  the  Savoy  Chapel,  London),  Lamy,  a  Benedictine,  and 
others. 


2o8  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  forcing  out  of 
France  some  five  hundred  thousand  industrious  and 
educated  inhabitants  for  the  offence  of  Protestantism, 
wrought  above  all  things  for  the  ascendancy  of 
rationalism.  Abbadie,  writing  his  Traite  de  la  Verite 
de  la  religion  chretienne  at  Berlin  in  1684,  speaks  of  an 
"infinity"  of  prejudiced  deists  as  against  the  "infinity" 
of  prejudiced  believers/  and  strives  hard  to  refute  both 
Hobbes  and  Spinoza  on  points  of  Biblical  criticism. 
For  a  time,  indeed,  there  was  a  falling  away  in  French 
intellectual  prestige,"  the  result,  not  of  the  mere  "protec- 
tive spirit"  in  literature,  but  of  the  immense  diversion  of 
national  energy  under  Louis  XIV  to  militarism  ;3  and 
the  freethinkers  lost  some  of  the  confidence  as  well  as 
some  of  the  competence  they  had  exhibited  in  the  days 
of  Moliere.^  There  had  been  too  little  solid  thinking 
done  to  preclude  a  reaction  when  the  king,  led  by 
Madame  de  Maintenon,  went  about  to  atone  for  his 
debaucheries  by  an  old  age  of  piety.  But  during  the 
period  of  exhaustion  and  official  orthodoxy  there  was  no 
real  building  up  of  belief ;  and  the  forward  movement  at 
length  recommenced.  In  1700,  at  the  height  of  the 
reign  of  the  king's  confessors,  there  appeared  the 
Lettre  d'Hippocrate  a  Damagete,  described  as  "the 
first  French  work  openly  destructive  of  Christianity"; 
and  it  was  ascribed  to  the  Comte  de  Boulainvilliers,  a 
pillar  of  the  feudal  system. ^  The  king  himself,  so  long 
morally  discredited,  could  only  discredit  pietism  by  his 
adoption  of  it;  the  Jansenists  and  the  Molinists  fought 
incessantly  ;  even  on  the  side  of  authority  there  was 
dissension    between    Bossuet   and    Fenelon  f    and    the 


'  Tom.  I,  §  ii,  ch.  ix  (ed.  1864,  i,  134,  177). 

-  Cp.  Huet,  Huetiana,  %  i. 

3  The  question  is  discussed  in  the  author's  Buckle  and  his  Critics,  pp. 
324-342.     Buckle's  view,  however,  was  held  by  Huet,  Huetiana,  §  73. 

''  Cp.  Perrens,  pp.  310-314. 

5  Lemontey,  Hist,  de  la  r^gence  et  de  la  minority  de  Louis  XV,  1835,  ii, 
358,  note. 

*  For  a  brief  view  of  the  facts,  usually  misconceived,  see  Lanson,  pp. 
610-61 1.  Ft^nelon  seems  to  have  been  uncandid,  while  Bossuet,  by 
common  consent,  was  malevolent.     There  is  probably  truth,  however, 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND 


209 


movement  of  mysticism  associated  with  the  latter  came 
to  nothing,  though  he  had  the  rare  credit  of  converting, 
albeit  to  a  doubtful  orthodoxy,  the  emotional  young 
Scotch  deist.  Chevalier  Ramsay.'  When  the  old  king 
died  (1715)  even  the  fashion  of  conformity  passed  away  f 
and  had  not  the  exhausted  and  bankrupt  country  been 
kept  for  another  half  century  on  the  rack  of  ruinous  wars, 
alike  under  the  regency  of  Orleans  and  the  rule  of  Louis 
XV,  the  intellectual  life  might  at  once  have  gone  fast 
and  far.  As  it  was,  war  after  war  absorbed  its  energy  ; 
and  the  debt  of  five  milliards  left  by  Louis  XIV  was 
never  seriously  lightened.  Under  such  a  system  the 
last  vestiges  of  constitutional  government  were  swept 
away,  and  the  autocracy  kept  the  checks  on  printing 
insuperably  strong,  so  that  freethought  could  not  attain 
to  open  speech.  Any  book  with  the  least  tendency  to 
freethought  had  to  seek  printers  in  Holland.  Huard,  in 
publishing  his  anonymous  translation  oi  \h^  Hypotyposes 
of  Sextus  Empiricus  (1725),  is  careful  to  say  in  his 
preface  that  he  "makes  no  application  of  the  Pyrrhonian 
objections  to  any  dogma  that  may  be  called  theological"; 
but  he  goes  on  to  add  that  the  scandalous  quarrels  of 
Christian  sects  are  well  fitted  to  confirm  Pyrrhonists  in 
their  doubts,  the  sects  having  no  solid  ground  on  which 
to  condemn  each  other.  As  such  an  assertion  was  rank 
heresy,  the  translation  had  to  be  issued  in  Amsterdam, 
and    even    there  without   a    publisher's   name.^     It  was 


in  the  view  of  Shaftesbury  {Characteristics,  ed.  1900,  ii,  214),  that  the  real 
grievance  of  F<^nelon's  ecclesiastical  opponents  was  the  tendency  of  his 
mysticism  to  withdraw  devotees  from  ceremonial  duties. 

'  Now  remembered  chiefly  through  the  account  of  his  intercourse  with 
Ft^nelon  (repr.  in  Didot  ed.  of  F^neJon's  misc.  works),  and  Hume's  long- 
extract  from  his  Philosophical  Principles  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion 
in  the  concluding  note  to  the  Essays.  Cp.  M.  Matter,  Le  Mysticisnie  en 
France  an  temps  de  Fdnelon,  1865,  pp.  352-4. 

^  Cp.  Duvernet,  Vie  de  Voltaire,  ch.  i.  Rivarol  {Letfres  a  Necker,  in 
(Eiivres,  ed.  1852,  p.  138)  wrote  that  under  Louis  XV  there  was  a 
"general  insurrection  "  of  discussion,  and  that  everybody  then  talked 
"only  of  religion  and  philosophy  during  half  a  century."  But  this 
exaggerates  the  beginnings,  of  which  Rivarol  could  have  no  exact 
knowledge. 

3  A  reprint  in  1735  bears  the  imprint  of  London,  with  the  note  "  Aux 
d^pens  de  la  Compagnie. " 

VOL    II  p 


2 1  o  MODERN  E  UROPEA  N  FREETHO  UGHT 

presumably  in  Holland  that  there  were  printed  in  1738 
the  two  volumes  of  Lettres  siir  la  religion  essentielle  a 
I'homme,  distingiiee  de  ce  qui  n'en  est  que  I'accessoire, 
by  Marie  Huber,  a  Genevese  lady  living  in  Lyons  ;  also 
the  two  following  parts  (1739),  replying  to  criticisms  on 
the  earlier.  In  its  gentle  way,  the  book  stands  very 
distinctly  for  the  "  natural  "  and  ethical  principle  in 
religion,  denying  that  the  deity  demands  from  men 
either  service  or  worship,  or  that  he  can  be  wronged  by 
their  deeds,  or  that  he  x:an  punish  them  eternally  for 
their  sins.  This  was  one  of  the  first  French  fruits,  after 
Voltaire,  of  the  English  deistic  influence;'  and  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  how  the  authoress  escaped 
molestation. 

Some  idea  of  the  intensity  of  the  tyranny  over  all  literature 
in  France  under  the  Old  Regime  may  be  gathered  from 
Buckle's  compendious  account  of  the  books  officially  con- 
demned, and  of  authors  punished,  during  the  two  generations 
before  the  Revolution.  Apart  from  the  record  of  the  treatment 
of  Bufifon,  Marmontel,  Morellet,  Voltaire,  and  Diderot,  it  runs  : 

"  The tendency  was  shown  in  matters  so  trifling  that  nothing 

but  the  gravity  of  their  ultimate  results  prevents  them  from 
being  ridiculous.  In  1770,  Imbert  translated  Clarke's  Letters 
on  Spain,  one  of  the  best  works  then  existing  on  that  country. 
This  book,  however,  was  suppressed  as  soon  as  it  appeared  ; 
and  the  only  reason  assigned  for  such  a  stretch  of  power  is  that 
it  contained  some  remarks  respecting  the  passion  of  Charles  III 
for  hunting,  which  were  considered  disrespectful  to  the  French 
crown,  because  Louis  XV  himself  was  a  great  hunter.  Several 
years  before  this  La  Bletterie,  who  was  favourably  known  in 
France  by  his  works,  was  elected  a  member  of  the  French 
Academy.  But  he,  it  seems,  was  a  Jansenist,  and  had  moreover 
ventured  to  assert  that  the  Emperor  Julian,  notwithstanding  his 
apostasy,  was  not  entirely  devoid  of  good  qualities.  Such 
offences  could  not  be  overlooked  in  so  pure  an  age  ;  and  the 
king  obliged  the  academy  to  exclude  La  Bletterie  from  their 
societ)'.  That  the  punishment  extended  no  further  was  an 
instance  of  remarkable  leniency  ;  for  Freret,  an  eminent  critic 
and  scholar,  was  confined  in  the  Bastille  because  he  stated,  in 
one   of    his   memoirs,   that   the   earliest    Prankish   chiefs   had 

'  Cp.  Staudlin,  Gesch.des  Rationalismus  und  Supernaturalismns,  1826, 
pp.  287-290  ;  Hag-enbach,  Kirchengeschichte  des  18.  und  ig.  JahrJmnderts, 
2te  Aiifl.  1848,  i,  218-220. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  211 

received  their  titles  from  the  Romtms.  The  same  penalty  was 
inflicted  four  different  times  upon  Lenglet  du  Fresnoy.  In  the 
case  of  this  amiable  and  accomplished  man,  there  seems  to 
have  been  hardly  the  shadow  of  a  pretext  for  the  cruelty  with 
which  he  was  treated  ;  though  on  one  occasion  the  alleged 
offence  was  that  he  had  published  a  supplement  to  the  History 
of  De  Thou. 

"Indeed,  we  have  only  to  open  the  biographies  and  corre- 
spondence of  that  time  to  find  instances  crowding  upon  us 
from  all  quarters.  Rousseau  was  threatened  with  imprison- 
ment, was  driven  from  France,  and  his  works  were  publicly 
burned.  The  celebrated  treatise  of  Helvetius  on  the  Mind  was 
suppressed  by  an  order  of  the  Royal  Council  ;  it  was  burned  by 
the  common  hangman,  and  the  author  was  compelled  to  write 
two  letters  retracting  his  opinions.  Some  of  the  geological 
views  of  Buffon  having  offended  the  clergy,  that  illustrious 
naturalist  was  obliged  to  publish  a  formal  recantation  of 
doctrines  which  are  now  known  to  be  perfectly  accurate.  The 
learned  Obsen'otions  oji  the  History  of  France,  by  Mably,  were 
suppressed  as  soon  as  they  appeared  :  for  what  reason  it  would 
be  hard  to  say,  since  M.  Guizot,  certainly  no  friend  either  to 
anarchy  or  to  irreligion,  has  thought  it  worth  while  to  republish 
them,  and  thus  stamp  them  with  the  authority  of  his  own  great 
name.  The  History  of  the  Indies,  by  Raynal,  was  condemned 
to  the  flames,  and  the  author  ordered  to  be  arrested.  Lanjuinais, 
in  his  well-known  work  on  Joseph  II, advocated  not  only  religious 
toleration,  but  even  the  abolition  of  slavery  ;  his  book,  therefore, 
was  declared  to  be  '  seditious  ';  it  was  pronounced  '  destructiv'e 
of  all  subordination,'  and  was  sentenced  to  be  burned.  The 
Analysis  of  BayJe,  by  Marsy,  was  suppressed,  and  the  author 
was  imprisoned.  The  History  of  the  Jesuits,  by  Linguet,  was 
delivered  to  the  flames  ;  eight  years  later  his  journal  was  sup- 
pressed ;  and,  three  years  after  that,  as  he  still  persisted  in 
writing,  his  Political  Annals  were  suppressed,  and  he  himself 
was  thrown  into  the  Bastille.  Delisle  de  Sales  was  sentenced 
to  perpetual  exile  and  confiscation  of  all  his  property  on  account 
of  his  work  on  the  Philosophy  of  Natxire.  The  treatise  by  Mey, 
on  French  Law,  was  suppressed  ;  that  by  Boncerf,  on  Feudal 
Law,  was  burned.  The  Memoirs  of  Beaumarchais  were  likewise 
burned  ;  the  Eloge  on  Fenelon,  by  La  Harpe,  was  merely  sup- 
pressed. Duvernet,  having  written  a  History  of  the  Sorbonne, 
which  was  still  unpublished,  was  seized  and  thrown  into  the 
Bastille,  while  the  manuscript  was  yet  in  his  own  possession. 
The  celebrated  work  of  De  Lolme  on  the  English  constitution 
was  suppressed  by  edict  directly  it  appeared.  The  fate  of  being 
suppressed  or  prohibited   also  awaited  the  Letters  of  Gervaise 


212  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

in  1724;  the  Dissertations  of  Courayer  in  1727  ;  the  Letters  of 
Montgon  in  1732  ;  the  History  of  Tamerlane,  by  Marg-at,  also 
in  1732  ;  the  Essay  on  Taste,  by  Cartaud,  in  1736  ;  The  Life 
of  Domat,  by  Provost  de  la  Jannes,  in  1742  ;  the  History  of 
Louis  XL,  by  Duclos,  in  1745  ;  the  Letters  of  Bargeton  in  1750  ; 
the  Memoirs  on  Troyes,  by  Grosley,  in  the  same  year  ;  the 
History  of  Clement  XL,  by  Reboulet,  in  1752  ;  The  School  of 
Man,  b}'  G^nard,  also  in  1752  ;  the  Therapeutics  of  Garlon  in 
1756  ;  the  celebrated  thesis  of  Louis,  o\\  Generation,  in  1754  ; 
the  treatise  on  Presidial  Jurisdiction,  by  Jousse,  in  1755  ;  the 
Ericie  of  Fontenelle  in  1768;  the  Thoughts  of  J  am  in  in  1769  ; 
the  History  of  Siam,  b}'  Turpin,  and  the  Eloge  of  Marctis 
Aurelius,  by  Thomas,  both  In  1770  ;  the  works  on  Finance  by 
Darlgrand,  in  1764,  and  by  Le  Trosne  in  1779  ;  the  Essay  on 
Military  Tactics,  by  Guibert,  in  1772  ;  the  Letters  of  Boucquet 
in  the  same  year  ;  and  the  Memoirs  of  Terrai,  by  Coquereau,  in 
1776.  Such  wanton  destruction  of  property  was,  however, 
mercy  itself  compared  to  the  treatment  experienced  by  other 
literary  men  in  France.  Desforges,  for  example,  having  written 
against  the  arrest  of  the  Pretender  to  the  English  throne,  was, 
solely  on  that  account,  buried  In  a  dungeon  eight  feet  square 
and  confined  there  for  three  years.  This  happened  in  1749  ; 
and  in  1770,  Audra,  professor  at  the  College  of  Toulouse,  and  a 
man  of  some  reputation,  published  the  first  v'olume  of  his 
Abridgement  of  General  History.  Beyond  this  the  work  never 
proceeded  ;  it  was  at  once  condemned  by  the  archbishop  of  the 
diocese,  and  the  author  was  deprived  of  his  office.  Audra,  held 
up  to  public  opprobrium,  the  whole  of  his  labours  rendered 
useless,  and  the  prospects  of  his  life  suddenly  blighted,  was 
unable  to  survive  the  shock.  He  was  struck  with  apoplexy, 
and  within  twenty-four  hours  was  lying  a  corpse  in  his  own 
house." 

14.  One  of  the  most  comprehensive  freethinking  works 
of  the  century,  the  Testament  of  Jean  Meslier,  cure  of 
Etrepigny,  in  Champagne  (d.  1729  or  1733),  though  it 
inspired  numbers  of  eighteenth-century  freethinkers 
who  read  it  in  manuscript,  was  never  printed  till  1861-4. 
It  deserves  here  some  special  notice.  At  his  death,  by 
common  account,  Meslier  left  two  autograph  copies  of 
his  book,  after  having  deposited  a  third  copy  in  the 
archives  of  the  jurisdiction  of  Sainte-Menehould.  By 
a  strange  chance  one  was  permitted  to  circulate,  and 
ultimately  there  were  some  hundred  copies  in  Paris, 
selling  at  ten  louis  apiece.     As  he  told  on  the  wrapper 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  213 

of  the  copy  he  left  for  his  parishioners,  he  had  not  dared 
to  speak  out  during  his  life  ;  but  he  had  made  full 
amends.  He  is  recorded  to  have  been  an  exceptionally 
charitable  priest,  devoted  to  his  parishioners,  whose 
interests  he  indignantly  championed  against  a  tyrannous 
lord  of  the  manor  ;'  and  his  book  reveals  him  as  a  man 
profoundly  impressed  at  once  by  the  sufferings  of  the 
people  under  heartless  kings  and  nobles,  and  the 
immense  imposture  of  religion  which,  in  his  eyes,  main- 
tained the  whole  evil  system.  Some  men  before  him 
had  impugned  miracles,  some  the  Gospels,  some  dogma, 
some  the  conception  of  deity,  some  the  tyranny  of  kings. 
He  impugns  all. 

He  must  have  written  during  whole  years,  with  a 
sombre,  invincible  patience,  dumbly  building  up,  in  his 
lonely  leisure,  his  unfaltering  negation  of  all  that  the 
men  around  him  held  for  sacred,  and  that  he  was  sworn 
to  preach — the  whole  to  be  his  testament  to  his 
parishioners.  In  the  slow,  heavy  style — the  style  of  a 
cart  horse,  Voltaire  called  it — there  is  an  indubitable 
sincerity,  a  smouldering  passion,  but  no  haste,  no 
explosion.  The  long-drawn,  formless,  prolix  sentences 
say  everything  that  can  be  said  on  their  theme  ;  and 
when  the  long  book  was  done  it  was  slowly  copied,  and 
yet  again  copied,  by  the  same  heavy,  unwearying  hand. 
He  had  read  few  books,  it  seems — only  the  Bible,  some 
of  the  Fathers,  Montaigne,  the  "Turkish  Spy,"  Naude, 
Charron,  Pliny,  and  Fenelon  on  the  existence  of  God, 
with  some  history,  and  Moreri's  Dictionary  ;  but  he  had 
re-read  them  often.  He  does  not  cite  Bayle  ;  and 
Montaigne  is  evidently  his  chief  master.  But  on  his 
modest  reading  he  had  reached  as  absolute  a  conviction 
of  the  untruth  of  the  entire  Judago-Christian  religion  as 
any  freethinker  ever  had.  Moved  above  all  by  his 
sense  of  the  corruption  and  misgovernment  around  him, 
he  sets  out  with  a  twofold  indictment  against  religion 

^  The  details  are  dubious.  See  the  memoir  compiled  by  "  Rudolf 
Charles"  (R.  C.  D'Ablaing- van  Giessenburg),  the  editor  of  the  Testament, 
Amsterdam,  3  torn,  1861-4. 


214  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

and  government,  of  which  each  sustains  the  other,  and 
he  tells  his  parishioners  how  he  had  been  "hundreds  of 
times  "'  on  the  point  of  bursting  out  with  an  indignant 
avowal  of  his  contempt  for  the  rites  he  was  compelled  to 
administer,  and  the  superstitions  he  had  to  inculcate. 
Then,  in  a  grimly-planned  order,  he  proceeds  to 
demolish,  section  by  section,  the  whole  structure. 

Religions    in    general      he     exhibits    as    tissues    of 
error,    illusion,  and    imposture,  the   endless    sources  of 
troubles   and    strifes    for  men.     Their  historical  proofs 
and    documentary    bases    are    then    assailed,    and     the 
Gospels  in  particular  are  ground  between  the  slow  mill- 
stones of  his   dialectic  ;    miracles,    promises,    and  pro- 
phecies   being    handled    in    turn.     The    ethic    and    the 
doctrine  are  next  assailed  all  along  the  line,  from  their 
theoretic  bases  to  their  political  results  ;  and  the  kings 
of  France  fare  no  better  than   their  creed.     As  against 
the    theistic   argument  of    Fenelon,    the    entire    theistic 
system   is  then   oppugned,    sometimes  with    precarious 
erudition,  generally  with  cumbrous  but  solid  reasoning  ; 
and  the  eternity  of  matter  is  affirmed  with   more  than 
Averroistic  conviction,  the  Cartesians  coming  in  for  a 
long   series   of    heavy  blows.     Immortality    is    further 
denied,  as  miracles  had  been  ;  and  the  treatise  ends  with 
a  stern  affirmation  of   its  author's  rectitude,  and,  as  it 
were,  a  massive  gesture  of  contempt  for  all  that  will  be 
said  against  him  when  he  has  passed  into  the  nothing- 
ness which  he  is  nearing.     "  I   have   never  committed 
any  crime,"    he   writes, ""    "nor   any    bad    or    malicious 
action  :  I  defy  any  man  to  make  me  on  this  head,  with 
justice,  any  serious  reproach";  but  he  quotes  from  the 
Psalms,  with  grim  zest,  phrases  of  hate  towards  workers 
of  iniquity.      There  is  not  even  the  hint  of  a  smile  at  the 
astonishing  bequest  he  was  laying  up  for  his  parishioners 
and  his  country.      He  was  sure  he  would  be  read,  and 
he  was  right. 

To  the  general  public,  however,  he  was  never  known 

'  Testament,  as  cited,  i,  25.  "  iii,  396. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  215 

save  by  the  "  Extract  " — really  a  deistic  adaptation — 
made  by  Voltaire,'  and  the  re-written  summary  by 
d'Holbach  and  Diderot  entitled  Le  Bon  Sens  du  Cure 
Meslier  {i'j'j2).  Even  this  publicity  was  delayed  for  a 
generation,  as  Voltaire,  who  heard  of  the  Testament  as 
early  as  1735,  seems  to  have  made  no  use  of  it  till  1762. 
But  the  entire  group  of  fighting  freethinkers  of  the  age 
was  in  some  sense  inspired  by  the  old  priest's  legacy. 

15.  With  the  ground  prepared  as  we  have  seen,  free- 
thought  was  bound  to  progress  in  France  in  the  age  of 
Louis  XV;  but  it  chanced  that  the  lead  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  most  brilliant  and  fecund  of  all  the  writers 
of  the  century.  Voltaire^  (1694-1778)  was  already 
something  of  a  freethinker  when  a  mere  child.  So 
common  was  deism  already  become  in  France  at  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  that  his  godfather,  an 
abbe,  is  said  to  have  taught  him,  at  the  age  of  three,  a 
poem  by  J.  B.  Rousseau, ^  then  privately  circulated,  in 
which  Moses  in  particular  and  religious  revelations  in 
general  are  derided  as  fraudulent.-*  Knowing  this  poem 
by  heart  in  his  childhood,  the  boy  was  well  on  the  way 
to  his  life's  work.  It  is  on  record  that  many  of  his 
school-fellows  were,  like  himself,  already  deists,  though 
his  brother,  a  juvenile  Jansenist,  made  vows  to  propitiate 
the  deity  on  the  small  unbeliever's  behalf.^     It  may  have 

^'  First  published  in  1762,  with  the  date  1742;  and  reprinted  in  the 
Evangile  de  la  liaison,  1766.  This  was  condemned  to  be  burned  by  the 
Parlement  of  Paris  in  1775,  and  no  fewer  than  four  times  ordered  to 
be  destroyed  in  the  Restoration  period. 

-  Name  assumed  for  literar}'  purposes,  and  probably  composed  by 
anagram  from  the  real  name  Arouet,  with  "  le  jeune  "  (junior)  added, 
thus  :  A.  R.  O.  V.  E.  T.  L(e).  I  (eune). 

3  Not  to  be  confounded  with  the  greater  and  later  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau. 

■*  See  the  poem  in  note  4  to  ch.  ii  oi  Duvernet's  Vie  de  Voltaire. 
Duvernet  calls  it  "one  of  the  first  attacks  on  which  philosophy  in  France 
had  ventured  against  superstition  "  (  Vic  de  Voltaire,  ed.  1797,  p.  19). 

5  Duvernet,  ch.  ii.  The  free-hearted  NiNON  de  l'Enclos,  brightest 
of  old  ladies,  is  to  be  numbered  among  the  pre-Voltairean  freethinkers, 
and  to  be  remembered  as  leaving  young  Voltaire  a  legacy  to  buy  books. 
She  refused  to  "  sell  her  soul "  by  turning  dt^vote  on  the  invitation  of  her 
old  friend  INIadame  de  Maintenon.  Madame  du  Deffand  and  Madame 
Geoffrin  were  among  the  later  freethinking  grandes  dames  of  the 
Voltairean  period  ;  and  so,  presumablj',  was  the  Madame  de  Crequi, 
quoted  by  Rivarol,  who  remarked  that  "  Providence"  is  "the  baptismal 
name  of  Chance." 


2 1 6  MODERN  E  U ROPE  A  N  FREETHO  UGHT 

been  a  general   reputation   for  audacious  thinking  that 
led    to    his    being    charged    with    the    authorship    of  a 
stinging  philippic  published   in  1715,  after  the  death  of 
Louis   XIV.     The    unknown    author,    a    young    man, 
enumerated  the  manifold   abuses  and  iniquities  of  the 
reign,  concluding  :  "  I  have  seen  all  these,  and  I  am  not 
twenty  years  old."     Voltaire  was  then  twenty-two  ;  but 
D'Argenson,   who    in   the   poem  had   been  called   "the 
enemy  of  the   human  race,"  finding   no  likelier  author 
for  the  verses,  put  him  under  surveillance  and  exiled 
him     from     Paris ;     and     on     his     imprudent     return 
imprisoned  him  for  nearly  a  year  in  the  Bastille  (17 16), 
releasing  him  only  when  the  real   author  of  the  verses 
avowed     himself.       Unconquerable     then     as     always, 
Voltaire    devoted    himself    in    prison    to    his    literary 
ambitions,  planning  his  Heiiriade  and  completing  his 
CEdipe,  which  was  produced  in  17 18  with  signal  success. 
Voltaire  was  thus  already  a  distinguished  young  poet 
and  dramatist  when,  in  1726,  after  enduring  the  affronts 
of  an  assault  by  a  nobleman's  lacqueys,  and  of  imprison- 
ment in  the   Bastille  for  seeking    amends  by  duel,   he 
came    to    England.       Four    years    previously,    in    the 
powerful   poem.  For  and  Against, "^  he  had  put  his  early 
deistic  conviction   in  a  vehement    impeachment  of  the 
immoral  creed  of  salvation  and  damnation,  making  the 
declaration,    "  I  am   not  a  Christian."      Thus   what    he 
had  to  learn  in  England  was  not  deism,  but  the  details  of 
the  deist  campaign  against  revelationism  ;  and  these  he 
mastered. ""      Not  only  was  he   directly  and    powerfully 
influenced   by    Bolingbroke,    who  became  his    intimate 
friend,  but  he  read  widely  in  the  philosophic,  scientific, 
and  deistic  English  literature  of  the  day,  and  went  back 
to  France,  after  three  years'  stay,  not  only  equipped  for 
his  ultimate  battle  with  tyrannous  religion,  but  deeply 

'  Pour  et  Contre,  on  Epitre  a  Uranie.  It  was  of  course  not  printed  till 
long'  afterwards. 

^  He  has  been  alternately  represented  as  owing- everything-  and  owing- 
very  little  to  England.  Cp.  Texte,  Roiissemi  and  the  Cosmopolitan 
Spirit,  Eng-.  trans,  p.  58.     Neither  view  is  just. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  217 

impressed  by  the  moral  wholesomeness  of  free  discus- 
sion.' Not  all  at  once,  indeed,  did  he  become  the  mouth- 
piece of  critical  reason  for  his  age  :  his  literary  ambitions 
were  primarily  on  the  lines  of  belles  lettres^  and  secon- 
darily on  those  of  historical  writing.  After  his  Pour  et 
Contre,  his  first  freethinking  production  was  the  Lettres 
Philosophiques  or  Lettres  Anglaises,  published  in  English 
in  1728,  and  in  French  in  1733  ;  and  the  official  burning 
of  the  book  by  the  common  hangman  was  a  sufficient 
check  on  such  activity  for  the  time.  Save  for  the  jests 
about  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  Mondaine  (1736),  a  slight 
satire  for  which  he  had  to  fly  from  Paris,  and  the  indirect 
though  effective  thrusts  at  bigotry  in  the  tragedy  of 
Mahomet  {\\x\VX.Qn  in  1739;  printed  in  1742),  in  the  tales 
of  Memnon  and  Zadig  (1747-8)  and  in  the  Idees  de  La 
Mothe  le  Vayer  (1751),  he  produced  nothing  markedly 
deistic  till  1755,  when  he  published  the  "  Poem  to  the 
King  of  Prussia,"  otherwise  named  Sur  la  loi  naturelle 
(which  appears  to  have  been  written  in  1751,  while  he 
was  on  a  visit  to  the  Margravine  of  Bayreuth),  and  that 
on  the  Earthquake  of  Lisbon.  So  definitely  did  the 
former  poem  base  all  morality  on  natural  principles  that 
it  was  ordered  to  be  burned  by  the  Parlement  of  Paris, 
then  equally  alarmed  at  freethinking  and  at  Molinism.^ 
And  so  impossible  was  it  still  in  France  to  print  any 
specific  criticism  of  Christianity,  that  when  in  1759  he 
issued  his  verse  translations  of  the  Song  of  Solomon  and 
Ecclesiastes  they  also  were  publicly  burned,  though  he 
had  actually  softened  instead  of  heightening  the  eroticism 
of  the  first  and  the  "  materialism  "  of  the  second. ^ 

It  is  thus  a  complete  mistake  on  the  part  of  Buckle  to 
affirm  that  the  activity  of  the  French  reformers  up  to 
1750  w^as  directed  against  religion,  and  that  it  was  there- 
after turned  against  the  State.   He  has  probably  mistaken 

'  Mr.  Morley  (  Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  40)  speaks  of  the  English  people  as 
having  then  won  "a  full  liberty  of  thought  and  speech  and  person." 
This,  as  we  have  seen,  somewhat  overstates  the  case.  But  discussion 
was  much  more  nearly  free  than  in  France. 

^  Condorcet,   Vie  de  Voltaire,  ed.  1792,  p.  92. 

3  Id.  p.  99. 


2 1 8  MODERN  E  UR  OPEA  N  FREETHO  UGHT 

the  meaning  of  the  summing  up  of  some  previous  writer 
to  ,the  effect  that  up  to  1750  the  political  opposition  to 
the  Court  was  religious,  in  the  sense  of  ecclesiastical  or 
sectarian,  and  that  it  afterwards  turned  to  matters  of 
public  administration.'  It  would  be  truer  to  say  that  the 
early  Lettres  Anglaises,  the  reading  of  which  later  made 
the  boy  Lafayette  a  republican  at  nine,  were  a  polemic 
for  political  and  social  freedom,  and  as  such  a  more 
direct  criticism  of  the  French  administrative  system 
than  Voltaire  ever  penned  afterwards,  save  in  the  Voix 
du  Sage  et  dit  Peiiple  (1750).  In  point  of  fact,  as  will  be 
shown  below,  only  a  few  scattered  freethinking  works 
had  appeared  in  French  up  to  1750,  almost  none  of  them 
directly  attacking  Christian  beliefs  ;  and,  despite  the 
above-noted  sallies  of  Voltaire,  Condorcet  comes  to 
the  general  conclusion  that  it  was  the  hardihood  of 
Rousseau's  deism  in  the  "  Confession  of  a  Savoyard 
Vicar"  in  his  Emile  (1762)  that  spurred  Voltaire  to  new 
activity.-  This  is  perhaps  not  quite  certain  :  there  is 
some  reason  to  believe  that  his  "  Sermon  of  the  Fifty," 
his  "  first  frontal  attack  on  Christianity,"^  was  written  a 
year  before  ;  but  in  any  case  that  and  other  productions 
of  his  at  once  left  Rousseau  far  in  the  rear.  Even  now 
he  had  perhaps  no  fixed  purpose  of  continuous  warfare 
against  so  powerful  and  cruel  an  enemy  as  the  church, 
which  in  1757  had  actually  procured  an  edict  pronouncing 
the  death  penalty  against  all  writers  of  works  attacking 
religion  ;  though  the  fall  of  the  Jesuits  in  1764  raised 
new  hopes  of  freedom.  But  when,  after  that  hopeful 
episode,  there  began  a  new  movement  of  Jansenist 
fanaticism,  and  when,  after  the  age  of  religious  savagery 
had  seemed  to  be  over,  there  began  a  new  series  of 
religious  atrocities  in  France  itself  (1762-66),  he  girded 
on  a  sword  that  was  not  to  be  laid  down  till  his  death. 

The  misconception  of  Buckle,    above   discussed,   has  been 

'  The  case  has  been  thus  correctly  put  by  M.  Rocquain. 
=  "  Cette    hardiesse  t^tonna  Voltaire,   et    excita  son  emulation "    (ed. 
cited,  p.  118). 

3  Avertissement  des  dditeurs  in  Basle  ed.  of  1792,  vol.  xlv,  p.  92. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  219 

widely  shared  even  among'  students.  Thus  Mr.  Morley,  dis- 
cussing the  "Creed  of  the  Savoyard  Vicar"  in  Rousseau's 
Emile  (1762),  writes  that  "  Souls  weary  of  the  fierce  mockeries 
that  had  so  long-  been  flying  like  fiery  shafts  against  the  far 
Jehovah  of  the  Hebrews,  and  the  silent  Christ  of  the  later 
doctors  and  dignitaries,"  may  well  have  turned  to  it  with 
ardour  {Rousseau,  ed,  1886,  ii,  266;.  He  further  speaks  of  the 
"  superiority  of  the  skeptical  parts  of  the  Savoyard  Vicar's  pro- 
fession  over  the  biting  mockeries  which  Voltaire  had  made 

the  fashionable  method  of  assault  "  (p.  294).  No  specifications 
are  offered,  and  the  chronology  is  seen  to  be  astray.  The  only 
mockeries  which  Voltaire  could  be  said  to  have  made  fashion- 
able before  1760  were  those  of  his  Lettres  AngJaises,  his  Mon- 
daine,  and  his  philosophically  humorous  tales,  as  Candide, 
Zadig,  Micromegas,  etc.;  and  all  his  distinctive  attacks  on 
Judaism  and  Christianity  were  yet  to  come.  Mr.  Morley,  as  it 
happens,  does  not  make  this  chronological  mistake  in  his 
earlier  work  on  Voltaire,  where  he  rightly  represents  him  as 
beginning  his  attack  on  "the  Infamous  "  after  he  had  settled 
at  Ferney  (1758).  His  "fierce  mockeries"  begin  at  the  earliest 
in  1761.  The  mistake  may  have  arisen  through  taking  as  true 
the  fictitious  date  of  1736  for  the  writing  of  the  Exainen 
Impoitant  de  Milord  BoUnghroke.  It  belongs  to  1767.  Buckle's 
mistake,  it  may  be  noted,  is  repeated  by  so  careful  a  student  as 
Dr.  Redlich,  Local  Government  in  Efigland,  Eng.  trans.  1903, 
i,  64. 

The  rest  of  his  long  life  was  a  sleepless  and  dexterous 
warfare,  by  all  manner  of  literary  stratagem,'  facilitated 
by  vast  literary  fame  and  ample  acquired  wealth,  against 
what  he  called  "the  Infamous" — the  church  and  the 
creed  which  he  found  still  swift  to  slay  for  mere  variation 
of  belief,  and  slow  to  let  any  good  thing  be  wrought  for 
the  bettering  of  men's  lives.  Of  his  prodigious  literary 
performance  it  is  probably  within  the  truth  to  say  that  in 
respect  of  swift  influence  on  the  general  intelligence  of 
the  world  it  has  never  been  equalled  by  any  one  man's 
writing  ;  and  that,  whatever  its  measure  of  error  and  of 
personal  misdirection,  its  broader  influence  was  in- 
variably for  peace  on  earth,  for  tolerance  among  men, 
and  for  reason  in  all  things.  His  faults  were  many,  and 
some  were  serious  ;  but  to  no  other  man  of  his  age,  save 

'   It  has  been  counted  that  he  used  no  fewer  than  a  hundred  and  thirtv 
different  pseudonyms. 


220  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

possibly  Beccaria,  can  be  attributed  so  much  beneficent 
accomplishment.  If  in  a  literary  way  he  hated  his 
personal  foes,  much  more  did  he  hate  cruelty  and 
bigotry  ;  and  it  was  his  work  more  than  any  that  made 
impossible  a  repetition  in  Europe  of  such  clerical  crimes 
as  the  hanging  of  the  Protestant  pastor,  La  Rochette  ; 
the  execution  of  the  Protestant,  Calas,  on  an  unproved 
and  absurdly  false  charge  ;  the  torture  of  his  widow  and 
children  ;  the  beheading  of  the  lad  La  Barre  for  ill- 
proved  blasphemy.'  As  "against  his  many  humanities, 
there  is  not  to  be  charged  on  him  one  act  of  public 
malevolence.  In  his  relations  with  his  fickle  admirer, 
Frederick  the  Great,  and  with  others  of  his  fellow- 
thinkers,  he  and  they  painfully  brought  home  to  free- 
thinkers the  lesson  that  for  them  as  for  all  men  there  is 
a  personal  art  of  life  that  has  to  be  learned,  over  and 
above  the  rectification  of  opinion.  But  he  and  they 
wrought  much  towards  that  liberation  alike  from  un- 
reason and  from  bondage  which  must  precede  any  great 
improvement  of  human  things. 

Voltaire's  constant  burden  was  that  religion  was  not 
only  untrue  but  pernicious,  and  when  he  was  not  drama- 
tically showing  this  of  Christianity,  as  in  his  poem  La 
Ligue  (1723),  he  was  saying  it  by  implication  in  such 
plays  as  Zaire  (1732)  and  Mahomet  (1742),  dealing  with 
the  fanaticism  of  Islam  ;  while  in  the  Essai  sur  les 
mceurs  (1756),  really  a  broad  survey  of  general  history, 
and  in  the  Steele  de  Louis  XLV,  he  applied  the  method 
of  Montesquieu,  with  pungent  criticism  thrown  in. 
Later,  he  added  to  his  output  direct  criticisms  of  the 
Christian  books,  as  in  i\\Q  Exameii  important  de  Milord 

'  See  details  in  Mr.  Morley's  Voltaire,  ii^\\\  ed.  pp.  165-170,  257-8.  The 
erection  by  the  French  freethinkers  of  a  monument  to  La  Barre  in  1905, 
opposite  the  Cathedral  oi  the  Sacred  Heart,  Montmartre,  Paris,  is  an 
expression  at  once  of  the  old  feud  with  the  church  and  the  French  appre- 
ciation of  high  personal  courag'e.  La  Barre  was  in  truth  something-  of  a 
scapegrace,  but  his  execution  was  an  infamy,  and  he  went  to  his  death  as 
to  a  bridal.  The  erection  of  the  monument  has  been  the  occasion  of  a 
futile  pretence  on  the  clerical  side  that  for  La  Barre's  death  the  church 
had  no  responsibility,  the  movers  in  the  case  being  laymen.  Nothing, 
apparently,  can  teach  Catholic  churchmen  that  the  church's  past  sins 
ought  to  be  confessed  like  those  of  individuals. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  221 

Bolinghroke  (1767),  and  the  Recherches  historiques  sur 
le  Chris tianis me  (?  1769),  continuing  all  his  former  lines 
of  activity.  Meanwhile,  with  the  aid  of  his  companion 
the  Marchioness  du  Chatelet,  an  accomplished 
mathematician,  he  had  done  much  to  popularise  the 
physics  of  Newton  and  discredit  the  fallacies  of  the 
system  of  Descartes  ;  all  the  while  preaching  a  New- 
tonian but  rather  agnostic  deism.  This  is  the  purport 
of  his  Philosophe  Ignorant^  his  longest  philosophical 
essay.'  The  destruction  of  Lisbon  by  the  earthquake  of 
1755  seems  to  have  shaken  him  in  his  deistic  faith,  since 
the  upshot  of  his  poem  on  that  subject  is  to  leave  the 
moral  government  of  the  universe  an  absolute  enigma  ; 
and  in  the  later  Candide  (1759)  he  attacks  theistic 
optimism  with  his  matchless  ridicule.  Indeed,  as  early 
as  1749,  in  his  Traite  de  la  Metaphysique,  written  for  the 
Marquise  du  Chatelet,  he  reaches  virtually  pantheistic 
positions  in  defence  of  the  God-idea,  declaring  with 
Spinoza  that  deity  can  be  neither  good  nor  bad.  But, 
like  so  many  professed  pantheists,  he  relapsed,  and  he 
never  accepted  the  atheistic  view  ;  on  the  contrary,  we 
find  him  arguing  absurdly  enough,  in  his  Homily  on 
Atheism  (1765),  that  atheism  had  been  the  destruction 
of  morality  in  Rome  f  and  his  tale  oi  Jenni,  or,  the  Sage 
and  the  Atheist  (1775),  is  a  polemic  against  the  atheism 
of  d'Holbach.  By  this  time  the  inconsistent  deism  of 
his  youth  had  itself  been  discredited  among  the  more 
thoroughgoing  freethinkers  ;  and  for  years  it  had  been 
said  in  one  section  of  literary  society  that  Voltaire  after 
all  "  is  a  bigot  :  he  is  a  deist  !  "^ 

But  for  freethinkers  of  all  schools  the  supreme  service 
of  Voltaire  lay  in  his  twofold  triumph  over  the  spirit  of 
religious    persecution.     He    had    contrived   at   once    to 

'  jNI.  Lanson  seems  to  overlook  it  when  he  writes  (p.  747)  that  "  the 
affirmation  of  God,  the  denial  of  Providence  and  miracles,  is  the  whole 
metaphysic  of  Voltaire." 

"^  Mr.  Morley  writes  (p.  209)  :  "  We  do  not  know  how  far  he  ever 
seriously  approached  the  question whether  a  society  can  exist  with- 
out a  relig-ion."  This  overlooks  the  Homdie  sur  V Ath^isme,  where  it  is 
discussed  seriously  and  explicitly. 

3  Horace  Walpole,  Letter  to  Gray,  Nov.  19th,  1765. 


222  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


make  it  hateful  and  to  make  it  ridiculous  ;  and  it  is  a 
great  theistic  poet  of  our  own  day  that  has  pronounced 
his  blade  the 

"  sharpest,  shrewdest  steel  that  ever  stabbed 
To  death  Imposture  through  the  armour  joints."' 

To  be  perfect,  the  tribute  should  have  noted  that  he 
hated  cruelty  much  more  than  imposture  ;  and  such  is 
the  note  of  the  whole  movement  of  which  his  name  was 
the  oriflamme.  It  is  notable  that  most  of  the  humani- 
tarian ideas  of  the  latter  half  of  the  century — the  demand 
for  the  reform  of  criminal  treatment,  the  denunciation  of 
war  and  slavery,  the  insistence  on  good  government,  and 
toleration  of  all  creeds — are  more  definitely  associated 
with  the  freethinking  than  with  any  religious  party, 
excepting  perhaps  the  laudable  but  uninfluential  sect  of 
Quakers. 

i6.  From  Voltaire  onwards  the  rationalistic  movement 
in  eighteenth-century  France  so  rapidly  widens  and 
deepens  that  it  is  impossible  in  the  present  survey  to  do 
more  than  note  its  main  features.  The  number  of 
rationalistic  writers,  despite  the  press  laws  which  in  that 
age  inllicted  the  indignity  of  imprisonment  on  half  the 
men  of  letters,  increased  from  decade  to  decade,  especially 
after  1765;  the  audacious  example  of  Voltaire,  and  the 
rising  prestige  of  the  pliilosophes  in  connection  with  the 
Encyclopedie  (1751-72),  giving  new  courage  to  writers 
and  printers.  At  once  the  ecclesiastical  powers  saw  in 
the  Encyclopedie  a  dangerous  enemy  ;  and  in  1752  the 
Sorbonne  condemned  a  thesis  by  the  Abbe  de  Prades, 
which  had  at  first  been  received  with  applause,  but  which 
was  found  on  study  to  breathe  the  spirit  of  the  new  work, 
whose  editor,  Diderot,  was  the  Abbe's  friend.  Soon 
after  came  the  formal  condemnation  of  the  first  two 
volumes  of  the  Encyclopedie^  of  which  the  second  had 
just  appeared.^ 

A  new  era  of  propaganda  and  struggle  had  visibly 

'  Browning-,  The  Tivo  Poets  of  Croisic,  st.  cvii. 

-  Rocquain,   U Esprit  Rdvolittiotuiaire  avant  la  Revolution,  1878,  pp. 
149-151  ;  Morley,  Diderot,  ch.  v. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  223 

begun.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the  century  freethought 
had  been  disseminated  largely  by  way  of  manuscripts' 
and  reprints  of  foreign  books  in  translation  ;  but  from 
the  middle  onwards,  despite  denunciations  and  prohibi- 
tions, new  books  multiply.  Voltaire  single-handed  pro- 
duced a  library  ;  and  d'Holbach  is  credited  with  at  least 
a  dozen  freethinking  treatises,  every  one  noticeable  in 
its  day.  But  there  were  many  more  combatants.  The 
reputation  of  Voltaire  has  overshadowed  even  that  of  his 
leading  contemporaries,  and  theirs  and  his  have  further 
obscured  that  of  the  lesser  men  ;  but  a  partial  list  of 
miscellaneous  freethinking  works  by  minor  French 
writers  during  the  century,  up  to  the  Revolution,  will 
serve  to  show  how  general  was  the  activity  after  1750. 
It  will  be  seen  that  very  little  was  published  in  France 
in  the  period  in  which  English  deism  was  most  fecund. 
It  was  when  the  long  period  of  chronic  warfare  ended 
for  France  with  the  peace  of  Paris  (1763)  ;  when  she  had 
lost  India  and  North  America  ;  when  she  had  expelled 
the  Jesuits  (1764)  ;  and  when  England  had  in  the  main 
turned  from  intellectual  interests  to  the  pursuit  of  empire 
and  the  development  of  manufacturing  industry,  that  the 
released  French  intelligence  turned  with  irresistible 
energy  to  the  rational  criticism  of  established  opinions. 
The  following  table  is  thus  symbolic  of  the  whole 
century's  development  : — 

1700.     Lettre  iVHippocrate  a  Daviagete,  attributed  to  the  Comte  de 

Boulainvilliers. 
,,        Gilbert    (Claude).     Histoire   de    Calejava,    on    de    Pisle  des 

homines  raisonnables,  avec  le  paralVele  de  leur  Morale  et  du 

Christianisme.       (Dijon.)       Suppressed  :     only    one    copy 

known  to  have  escaped. 
1704.     Dialogii.es  de  M.  le  Baron  de  la  Houtan  et  dhm  sauvage  dans 

PAmerique.     By  Gueudeville,  Amsterdam. 
1710.     TIssot  de   Patot.      Voyages   et  Avantures  de  Jaques  Masse. 

(Bourdeaux.) 
171 2.     Deslandes.     A.  F.  B.     Reflexions  sur  les  grands  hommes  qui 

sont  morts  en  plaisantant.- 

'  Cp.   pref.   (Zrt    Vie  de  Salviaii)  to   French    trans,   of   Salvian,   1734, 
p.  Ixix. 

-  Given  by  Brunet,  who  is  followed  by  Wheeler,  as  appearing-  in  1732, 


1739 

1741 

1743' 

1745- 

224  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

1714.  Discours  sur  la  liberie  de  penser\¥ vo^wch.  trans,  of  CoUins's 
Discourse  of  Freethinking\,  traduit  de  I'anglois  et  augment^ 
d'une  Lettre  d'un  Medecin  Arabe. 

1725.     Huard's  trans,  of  the  Hypotyposes  of  Sextus  Empiricus. 

1732.      Re-issue  of  Deslandes's  Reflexions. 

1737.  D'Argens,  Marquis.     La  philosophie  du  Bon  Sens.    (Berlin.) 

1738.     ,  Lettres  Juives.     6  torn.      (Berlin.) 

,,  Marie  Huber.  Lett  res  sur  la  religion  essentielle  ii  Vliomme, 
distingue  de  ce  qui n"" en  est  que  Vaccessoire.  2  torn.  (Nomi- 
nally London).     Rep.  1739. 

,  Suite  to  the  foregoing,  "  servant  de  reponse  aux 

objections,"  etc.     Alscr  Suite  de  la  troisieme  partic. 

Deslandes,  A.  F.  B.     Pygmalion,  ou  la  Statue  animee.     Con- 
demned to  be  burnt  by  Parlement  of  Dijon,  1742. 

Nouvelles  liberies  de  pe7iser  (Amsterdam). 

De  la  Serre   (Lieut.).     Examen  de  la  Religion.     Appeared 
under  other  titles.     Condemned  to  be  burnt  by  Parlement 
of  Paris. 
,,         La  Mettrie,  Histoire  naturelle  de  Vame. 

1747.  Deslandes,   A.     F.    B.     De   la    Certitude    des  coimaissances 

humaines. 

1748.  Esteve,  P.     VOriginedeVUniversexpliqueepariinprincipe 

de  matiere. 
,,         La  Mettrie.      IJ' Homme  Machine. 

1750.  Nouvelles  liberies  de penser.   Rep.  (?)  Containing  Dumarsais's 

Dissertation  du  Philosophe  (the  Essai  sur  les  prejujes). 

1 75 1.  Mirabaud,  J.  B.  de.     Le  Monde,  son  urigine  et  son  antiquite. 
,,         De  Prades.     Sorbonne  Thesis. 

1752.  Maubert  de  Gouvest.     Lettres  Iroquoises. 

„  G^nard,  F.  L^Ecole  de  Vhomme,  ou  Parallele  des  Portraits 
du  siecle  et  des  tableaux  de  Vecriture  sainte.  Author 
imprisoned. 

1753.  Baume-Desdossat,     Canon    of    Avignon.      La      Christiade. 

Book  suppressed.     Author  fined. 

1754.  Premontval,  A.  \.  le  Guay  de.     Le  Diogene  de  d'Alembert,  ou 

Pensees  libres  sur  Vhomme.      (Berlin  :  2nd  ed.   enlarged, 

17550 
,,         Burigny,  J.  L.      Theologie  payenne. 


and  as  translated  into  Eng-lish,  under  the  title  Dying  Merrily,  in  1745. 
But  I  possess  an  Eng-lish  translation  of  ijij  (pref.  dated  March  25), 
entitled  A  Philological  Essay  :  or,  Reflections  on  the  Death  of  Freethinkers 

By  Monsieur  D ,  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences  in  France, 

and   author  of  the  Poefae    Rusticantis    Literatuni    Otiiaii.     Translated 

from  the    French   by  Mr.  B ,  with  additions   by  the   author,  now  in 

London,  and  the  translator.  [A  note  in  a  contemporary  hand  makes 
"  B"  Boyer.] 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND 


225 


1754.  Beausobre,    L.   de    (the   Younger).      Pyrrhunisme    die    Sage. 

(Berlin.)     Burnt  by  Paris  Parlement. 

1755.  Les  Truis  Imposteurs.     Attributed  to  Boulainvilliers. 

,,         Analyse  dc  Bayle.     Begun  by  Marsy,  continued  by  Robinel. 

1756.  Le      Christianisme      devoile.        Attributed      to     Boulanger, 

Damilaxille,  and  d'Holbach.     3  toni.     Rep.  1766  and  1777. 

1757.  Premontval.      Vues  Philosophiques.     (Amsterdam.) 

[In  this  year  was  pronounced  tlie  death  penalty  against 
all  writers  attacking  religion.  Hence  a  suspension  of 
publication.  In  1764  the  Jesuits  were  expelled,  and  the 
policy  of  suppression  was  soon  paralysed.] 

1760.  Dumarsais  (d.  1756).  Essai  siir  les  prejtiges  (the  Disserta- 
tion du  Philosophe,  with  additions). 

1762.      Meister,  J.  H.     De  l''origine  des principes  religieux. 

1764.  Discours  szir  la  liberie  de penser.     (Rep.  of  trans,  of  Collins.) 
,,         Recherches  stir  Vorigine  du  despotisme  oriental,  et  des  super- 
stitions.    Ouvrage  posthume  de  Mr.  D.  J.  D.  P.  E.  C. 

,,         L'Evangile  de  la  Raison,    par  M y,  M.D.   [ed.   by  Abbe 

Dulaurens  ;    containing    the    Testament   de  Jean    Meslier 
(greatly  abridged    and  adapted  by  Voltaire)]  ;    Voltaire's 
Catechisme   de    Phonnete    homme.    Sermon    des   cinquante, 
Examen  de  la  religion,  etc.      [Rep.  1766.] 

1765.  Castillon,  J.  L.     Essai  de philosophie  morale. 

i-jbb.      Boulanger,     N.      A.      UAntiquite      devoilee.        Recast     by 

d'Holbacli. 
,,         De   Prades.     Abrege  de   Vhistoire    ecclesiastique   de  Fleury. 

(Berlin.)     Pref  by  Frederick  the  Great. 
,,         Burigny,   J.    L.      Examen     critique    des    Apologistes    de   la 

religion    chretienne.      Published    by    Naigeon    under    the 

name  of  Freret.     [Twice  rep.  in  1767.] 

1767.  Castillon,  J.  L.     Almanack  Philosophique. 

,,         Doutes  sur  la    religion.     Attributed    to    Boulainvilliers    and 

others. 
,,         Dulaurens,  Abbe  H.  J.     U Antipapisme  revele. 
,,         Freret,  N.     Lettre  de  Thrasybule  ii  Leucippe.     [Written  long 

before.] 
,,         Damilaville.     H Honnetete  Theologique. 
,,         Reprint   of   Le    Christianisme    devoile.     [Condemned   to   be 

burnt,  1770.] 
,,         Questions  sur  les  Miracles.     Par  un  Proposant. 
,,        Seconde  partie  of  the  Recherches  sur  Vorigine  du  despotisme. 

1768.  Catalogue  raisonne  des  esprits  forts,  depuis  le  cure  Rabelais 

jusqii  ''au  cure  Meslier. 
,,         D'Holbach.     La  Contagion  Sacree. 

,,         Theologie  Portative.    "  Par  I'abbe  Bernier."    [By  d'Holbach.] 
,,         D'Argens.      CEuvres  completes.     24  tom.     (Berlin.) 
VOL.  II  Q 


226  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


1768.  Naigeon,  J.  A.     Le  miUtairc  phihsophe. 
Robinet,  J.  B.      Consideratiotis  PhiJosophiques. 

1769-1780.     U Evangile  dii  jour.      18  torn.     Scores  of  pieces,  chiefly 
by  Voltaire,  but  with  some  by  others. 

1769.  Castillon,  J.    L.     Histoire  generale    dcs  dogmcs   et  opinions 

ph  iJosoph  iqnes. 
,,        Isoard-DeHsle  (otherwise  DeHsle  de  Sales).     La  Philusophie 
de  la  Nature.     Author  imprisoned. 
UEnfer  Detruit,  traduit  de  I'Anglois  [by  d'Holbach]. 

1770.  Histoire  critique  de  Jesus  Christ.     [By  d'Holbach.] 
,,         Dumarsais.     Essai  sur-les  prejuges.      Rep. 

,,         Recueil  Phihsophique.      Edited  by  Naigeon. 

[In    this    year  appeared    the    Systeme  de  la   Nature  of 

d'Holbach,  which  checked  deism  and  turned  discussion  on 

atheism.      In  1776  appeared  Condorcet's  Lettres  d'un  Theo- 

logue,  also  atheistic] 

1772.     Le  Bon  Sens.     [Adaptation    from    Meslier  by  Diderot    and 

d'Holbach.] 
177^.      Carra,  J.  L.     Systeme  de  la  Raison,  ou  le prophete philosophe. 

,,         Burigny  (?).     Recherches  surles  miracles. 
1774.      D'Holbach.     La  politique  naturelle. 

,,         .     Systeme  Sociale. 

,,         Abauzit,  F.     Reflexions  impartiales  sur  les  Evayigiles,  suivies 
d'une  essai  sur  I'Apocalypse.     (Abauzit  died  1767). 

1776.  D'Holbach.     La  morale  universeUe. 
,,         .     Ethocratie. 

1777.  Carra,  J.  L.     Esprit  de  la  morale  et  de  la  philosophie. 
,,         Examen  critique  du  noiiveau  Testament. 

Attrib.  to  J.  B.  de  Mirabaud.    Appd.  in  1769  as  Reflexions 
impartiales  sur  Vevangile. 

1778.  Barthez,     P.    J.      Nouvea^ix    Elements    de    la     Scietice    de 

r  Homme. 

1780.  Duvernet,  Abbe  Th.  J.     L.Pntolerance  religieuse. 

,,  Clootz,  Anacharsis.  La  Certitude  des  preuves  du  JlLahome- 
tisme.  [Reply  by  way  of  parody  to  Bergier's  work,  noted 
on  p.  229.] 

1781.  Marechal,  Sylvain.     L^e  noiiveau  Lucrece. 

1783.  Brissot  de  Warville.     L^ettres  philosophiques  sur  S.  Paid. 

1784.  Doray  de  Longrais.     Eaustin,  ou  le  siecle  philosophique. 

,,  Pougens,  M.  C.  J.  de.  Recreations  de  philosophie  et  de 
morale. 

1787.  Pasioret,  Marquis.     Zoroastre,  Conf ileitis,  et  Mahomet. 

1788.  Meister,  J.  H.     De  la  Morale  Naturelle. 

,,         Pastoret,    Marquis.     Afoise    considere    conime   legislateur  et 

com  me  moral iste. 
„         Marechal.     Almanach  des  honnetes gens. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND 


1789.     Duvernet,  Abbe.     Les  Devotions  de  Madame  de  Betsamooth. 
,,         Cerutti   (Jesuit   Father).     Breviaire  Philosophique,   on  His- 

toire  du  Judaisme,  du  Christian is7ne,  et  dii  Deisme. 
1791-93.      Naigeon.     Didionnaire    dc    la    philosophic    anciennc    et 

modernc. 

Of  these  works  the  merit  is  of  course  very  various  ;  but 
the  total  effect  of  the  propaganda  was  formidable,  and 
some  of  the  treatises  are  extremely  effective.  The 
Examen  critique  of  Burigny,  for  instance,  which 
quickly  won  a  wide  circulation,  is  one  of  the  most 
telling  attacks  thus  far  made  on  the  Christian  system, 
raising  as  it  does  most  of  the  issues  fought  over  by 
recent  criticism.  It  tells  indeed  of  a  whole  generation 
of  private  investigation  and  debate.  The  Lettre  de 
Thrasyhule  a  Leucippe,  said  to  have  been  written  by 
Freret  (d.  1749)  as  early  as  1722,  but  never  printed  in 
his  lifetime,  is  a  no  less  mordant  attack  on  theism  ; 
and  the  powerful  Essai  siir  les  Prejuges  oi  Dumarsais 
(1676-1756),  first  published  in  1750,'  sets  forth  such  a 
stern  indictment  alike  of  religions  and  governments  that 
few  copies  of  the  book  were  allowed  to  survive.^  In  him 
we  have  already  the  note  of  the  Revolution.  Making 
no  such  conciliatory  concessions  to  religion  in  the 
abstract  as  were  offered  by  other  deists,  he  thunders  on 
the  text  that  "  Under  unjust  Gods  proclaimed  by  lying 
priests,  under  licentious  and  cruel  chiefs,  subjects  will 
never  be  either  virtuous  or  happy.  Morality  is  forced 
to  break  for  ever  with  religion  and  policy. "^ 

Of  both  Freret  and  Dumarsais  the  arguments  are  to  be 
found  reproduced  in  d'Holbach's  Systeme  de  la  Nature 
as  well  as  in  the  anonymous  Bon  Sens  given  forth 
(1772),  presumptively  by  Diderot  and  d'Holbach,  as 
the   work  of  Jean   Meslier,    but  really  an   independent 

'  In  that  issue,  under  the  title  Dissertation  du  Philosophy  it  was  pre- 
faced by  a  letter  to  La  Harpe,  then  a  freethinker,  in  entire  sympathy 
with  the  work. 

-  Mirabeau  spoke  of  the  Essai  a.s  "  le  livre  le  moins  connu,  et  celui  qui 
m^rite  le  plus  I'etre."  Even  the  reprint  of  1793  had  become  "extremely 
rare  "  in  1822.  The  book  seems  to  have  been  specially  disquieting-  to 
orthodoxy,  and  was  hunted  down  accordingfly. 

3  Ch.  xiii.      Rep.  of  1822,  p.  338. 


228  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

compilation,  embodying  other  arguments  with  his,  and 
putting  the  whole  with  a  concision  and  brilliancy  to 
which  he  could  make  no  approach.  Premontval,  a  bad 
writer,'  contrives  to  say  many  pungent  things  of  a 
deistic  order  {nh.\s  Diogene  de  d'  Aleinbert,  and,  following 
Marie  Huber,  puts  forward  the  formula  of  religion 
versus  theology,  which  has  done  so  much  duty  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  Of  the  whole  literature  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  it  covered  cogently  most  of  the  impor- 
tant grounds  of  latter-day  debate,  from  the  doctrine  of 
torments  to  the  bases  of  ethics  and  the  problem  of  deity; 
and  it  would  be  hard  to  show  that  the  nineteenth  century 
has  handled  the  main  issues  with  more  sincerity, 
lucidity,  or  logic  than  were  attained  by  Frenchmen  in 
the  eighteenth.  It  is  only  in  the  analysis  of  the 
historical  problem  by  the  newer  tests  of  anthropology 
and  hierology,  and  in  the  light  of  latterly  discovered 
documents,  that  our  generation  has  made  much 
advance  on  the  strenuous  pioneers  of  the  age  of  Voltaire. 
17.  Though  the  bibliographers  claim  to  have  traced 
the  authorship  in  most  cases,  such  works  were  in  the 
first  instance  nearly  always  published  anonymously,"  as 
were  those  of  Voltaire,  d'Holbach,  and  the  leading  free- 
thinkers ;  and  the  clerical  policy  of  suppression  had  the 
result  of  leaving  them  generally  unanswered,  save  in 
anonymous  writings,  when  they  nevertheless  got  into 
private  circulation.  It  was  impolitic  that  an  official 
answer  should  appear  to  a  book  which  was  officially  held 
not  to  exist ;  so  that  the  orthodox  defence  was  mainly 
confined  to  the  classic  performances  of  Pascal,  Bossuet, 
Huet,  Fenelon,  and  some  outsiders  such  as  the  Protes- 
tant Abbadie,  who  settled  first  in  Berlin  and  later  in 
London.  The  polemic  of  every  one  of  the  writers 
named  is  a  work  of  great  ability  ;  even  that  of  Abbadie 
{Traite  de  la  Veritede  la  religion  chretienne,  1684),  though 

^  Like  Huard,  however,  he  strives  for  a  reform  in  spelling,  dropping 
many  doubled  letters,  and  writing  home,  bone,  acuse,  fole,  apelle, 
hojiete,  afreiix,  etc. 

=  The  exceptions  were  books  published  outside  of  France. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  229 


now  little  known,  being  in  its  day  much  esteemed.'  In 
the  age  of  Louis  XIV  those  classic  answers  to  unbelief 
were  by  believers  held  to  be  conclusive  ;  and  thus  far 
the  French  defence  was  certainly  more  thorough  and 
philosophical  than  the  English.  But  French  free- 
thought,  which  in  Herbert's  day  had  given  the  lead  to 
English,  now  drew  new  energy  from  the  English  growth  ; 
and  the  general  arguments  of  the  old  apologists  did  not 
explicitly  meet  the  new  attack.  Their  books  having 
been  written  to  meet  the  mostly  unpublished  objections 
of  previous  generations,  the  church  through  its  chosen 
policy  had  the  air  of  utter  inability  to  confute  the 
newer  propaganda,  though  some  apologetic  treatises  of 
fair  po\ver  did  appear,  in  particular  those  of  the  Abbe 
Bergier.-  By  the  avowal  of  a  Christian  historian,  "  So 
low  had  the  talents  of  the  once  illustrious  Church  of 
France  fallen,  that  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  Christianity  itself  was  assailed,  not  one 
champion  of  note  appeared  in  its  ranks  ;  and  when  the 
convocation  of  the  clergy,  in  1770,  published  their 
famous  anathema  against  the  dangers  of  unbelief,  and 
offered  rewards  for  the  best  essays  in  defence  of  the 
Christian  faith,  the  productions  called  forth  were  so 
despicable  that  they  sensibly  injured  the  cause  of 
religion. "3 

Merit  apart,  the  defence  was  belated.     After  the  expul- 
sion  of  the  Jesuits   (1762)-*  the    press   grew  practically 

'  Madame  de  St^vig-ne,  for  instance,  declared  that  she  would  not  let 
pass  a  year  of  her  life  without  re-readingf  the  second  volume  of  Abbadie. 

^  Le  D^isme  refute  par  lui-mevie  (largfely  a  reply  to  Rousseau),  1765  ; 
1770,  Apologie  de  la  religion  chretienne  ;  1773,  La  certitude des preiives  du 
christianisme.  Previously  had  appeared  the  Lettres  sur  le  D^isme  of  the 
younger  Salchi,  professor  at  Lausanne.  It  deals  chiefly  with  the 
Eng-lish  deists,  and  with  D'Arg-ens.  There  were  also  two  journals, 
Jesuit  and  Jansenist,  which  fought  Xhe  philosophes  (X.a.nson,  p.  721);  and 
sometimes  even  a  manuscript  was  answered — e.g.,  the  Rc'fiitation  du 
Celse  inodertie  of  the  Abbe  Gautier  (1752),  a  reply  to  Mirabaud's  unpub- 
lished Exanien  critique. 

3  Alison,  History  of  Europe,  ed.  1849,  i,  180-1. 

■*  The  Jesuits  were  expelled  from  Portugal  in  1759  ;  from  Bohemia  and 
Denmark  in  1766  ;  from  Spain,  Genoa,  and  \'enice  in  1767  ;  and  from 
Naples,  Malta,  and  Parma  in  1768.  At  first  the  Pope,  Clement  VIII, 
strove  to  defend  them,  but  in  1773  the  Society  was  suppressed  by  papal 
bull. 


230  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

more  and  more  free;  and  when,  after  the  accession  of 
Pope  Clement  XIV  (1769),  the  freethinking  books  circu- 
lated with  less  and  less  restraint,  Bergier  opened  fire  on 
deism,  and  deists  and  clerics  joined  in  answering  the 
atheistic  Systeme  de  la  Nature  of  d'Holbach.  But  by 
this  time  the  deistic  books  were  legion,  and  the  political 
battle  over  the  taxation  of  church  property  had  become 
the  more  pressing  problem,  especially  seeing  that  the 
mass  of  the  people  remained  conforming. 

The  English  view  that  French  orthodoxy  made  a  "bad" 
defence  to  the  freethinking-  attack  as  compared  with  what  was 
done  in  England  (Sir  J.  F.  Stephen,  Horcp  Sahhnticce,  2nd  sen 
p.  281  ;  Alison,  as  cited  above)  proceeds  on  some  misconception  ot 
the  circumstances,  which,  as  has  been  shown,  were  substantially 
different  in  the  two  countries.  Could  the  English  clergy  have 
resorted  to  official  suppression  of  deistic  literature,  they  too 
would  doubtless  have  done  so.  Swift  and  Berkeley  bitterly 
desired  to.  But  the  view  that  the  English  defence  was  relatively 
"good,"  and  that  Butler's  in  particular  was  decisive,  is  also,  as 
we  have  seen,  fallacious.  In  Sir  Leslie  Stephen's  analysis,  as 
apart  from  his  preamble,  the  orthodox  defence  is  exhibited  as 
generally  weak,  and  often  absurd.  In  France,  the  defence 
began  sooner,  and  was  more  profound  and  even  more  methodical. 
Pascal  at  least  went  deeper,  and  Bossuet  (in  his  Discoiirs  sur 
VHistoire  Universelle)  more  widely,  into  certain  inward  and 
outward  problems  of  the  controversy  than  did  any  of  the 
English  apologists  ;  Huet  produced,  in  his  Demonstratio  Evan- 
gelica,  one  of  the  most  methodical  of  all  the  defensive  treatises 
of  the  time  ;  Abbadie,  as  before  noted,  gave  great  satisfaction, 
and  certainly  grappled  zealously  with  Hobbes  and  Spinoza  ; 
Allix,  though  no  great  dialectician,  gave  a  lead  to  English 
apologetics  against  tlie  deists  (above,  p.  107),  and  was  even 
adapted  by  Paley;  and  Fenelon,  though  his  Traite  de  P Existence 
et  des  Attrihiits  de  Dieu  (1712)  and  Lettres  sur  la  Eeligioii  (1716) 
are  not  very  powerful  processes  of  reasoning,  contributed 
through  his  reproduced  conversations  (1710)  with  Ramsay  a  set 
of  arguments  at  least  as  plausible  as  anything  on  the  English 
side,  and,  what  is  more  notable,  marked  by  an  amenity  which 
almost  no  English  apologist  attained. 

The  ground  had  been  thus  very  fully  covered  by  the  defence 
in  France  before  the  main  battle  in  England  began ;  and,  when 
a  new  French  campaign  commenced  with  Voltaire,  the  defence 
against  that  incomparable  attack,  so  far  as  the  system  allowed 
of  any,  was   probably  as  good  as  it  could  have  been  made  in 


FJ^AXCE  AND  HOLLAND  231 


Kiii:;l;uid.  As  we  have  seen,  the  very  principle  of  suppression 
disallowed  notice  of  books  secretly  printed,  and  therefore  offi- 
cially non-existent.  But,  as  Paley  admitted  with  reference  to 
Gibbon  ("Who  can  refute  a  sneer?"),  the  new  attack  was  very 
hard  to  meet.  A  sneer  is  not  hard  to  refute  when  it  is 
unfounded,  Inasmuch  as  it  implies  a  proposition,  which  can  be 
rebutted  or  turned  by  another  sneer.  The  Anglican  church  had 
been  well  enough  pleased  by  the  polemic  sneers  of  Swift  and 
Berkeley  ;  but  the  other  side  had  the  heavier  guns,  and  of  the 
mass  of  defences  produced  in  England  nothing  remains  save  in 
the  neat  compilation  of  Paley.  Alison's  whole  avowal  might 
equally  well  apply  to  anything  produced  in  England  as  against 
Voltaire.  The  skeptical  line  of  argument  for  faith  had  been 
already  employed  by  Huet  and  Pascal  and  Fenelon,  with 
visibly  small  success  ;  Berkeley  had  achieved  nothing  with  it 
as  against  English  deism  ;  and  Butler  had  no  such  eflect  in  his 
day  in  England  as  to  induce  French  Catholics  to  use  him.  (He 
does  not  appear  to  have  been  translated  Into  French  till  1821.) 
On  the  other  hand,  Voltaire  circulated  widely  In  England,  and 
was  no  better  answered  there  than  in  France.  His  attack  was, 
in  truth,  at  many  points  peculiarly  baffling,  were  it  only  by  its 
inimitable  wit.  The  English  replies  to  Spinoza,  ag'aln,  were  as 
entirely  inefficient  or  deficient  as  the  French  ;  the  only  intelli- 
gent English  answers  to  Hume  on  Miracles  (the  replies  on 
other  issues  were  of  no  account)  made  use  of  the  French  investi- 
gations of  the  Jansenlst  miracles  ;  and  the  replies  to  Gibbon 
were  In  general  ignominious  failures. 

Finally,  though  the  deeper  reasonings  of  Diderot  were  over 
the  heads  alike  of  the  French  and  the  English  clergy,  the 
Systevie  de  la  Nature  of  d'Holbach  was  met  skilfully  enough  at 
many  points  by  G.  J.  Holland  (1772),  who,  though  not  a  French- 
man, wrote  excellent  French,  and  supplied  for  French  readers  a 
very  respectable  rejoinder ;  whereas  In  England  there  was 
practically  none.  In  this  case,  of  course,  the  defence  was 
delstic  ;  as  was  that  of  Voltaire,  who  criticised  d'Holbach  as 
Bolingbroke  attacked  Spinoza  and  Hobbes.  But  the  Examen 
du  Materialisme  of  the  Abbe  Bergier  (1771),  who  was  a  member 
of  the  Academy  of  Sciences,  was  at  least  as  good  as  anything 
that  could  then  have  been  done  in  the  Church  of  England. 
Broadly  speaking,  as  we  have  said,  much  more  of  French  than 
of  English  intelligence  had  been  turned  to  the  dispute  in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  century.  In  England,  political  and  indus- 
trial discussion  relieved  the  pressure  on  creed  ;  in  France, 
before  the  Revolution,  the  whole  habit  of  absolutism  tended  to 
restrict  discussion  to  questions  of  creed  ;  and  the  attack  would 
in  anv  case  have  had  the  best  of  it,  because  It  embodied  all  the 


232  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

critical  forces  hitherto  available.  The  controversy  thus  went 
much  further  than  the  pre-Humian  issues  raised  in  England  ; 
and  the  English  orthodoxy  of  the  end  of  the  century  was,  in 
comparison,  intellectually  as  weak  as  politically  and  socially  it 
was  strong. 

1 8.  Above  the  scattered  band  of  minor  combatants  rises 
a  group  of  writers  of  special  power,  several  of  whom, 
without  equalling  Voltaire  in  ubiquity  of  influence, 
rivalled  him  in  intellectual  energy  and  industry.  The 
names  of  Diderot,  D'Holbach,  D'Alembert,  Helve- 
Tius,  and  Condorcet  are  among  the  first  in  literary 
France  of  the  generation  before  the  Revolution  ;  after 
them  come  Volney  and  Dupuis  ;  and  in  touch  with 
the  whole  series  stands  the  line  of  great  mathematicians 
and  physicists  (to  which  also  belongs  D'Alembert), 
Laplace,  Lagrange,  Lalande,  Delambre.  When 
to  these  we  add  the  names  of  Montesquieu,  Buffon, 
Chamfort,  Rivarol,  Vauvenargues  ;  of  the  mate- 
rialists La  Mettrie  and  Cabanis  ;  of  the  philosophers 
CoNDiLLAC  and  Destutt  de  Tracy  ;  of  the  historian 
Raynal  ;  of  the  poet  Andre  Chenier  ;  of  the  poli- 
ticians Turcot,  Mirabeau,  Danton,  Desmoulins, 
Robespierre — all  (save  perhaps  Raynal)  deists  or  else 
pantheists  or  atheists — it  becomes  clear  that  the  intelli- 
gence of  France  was  predominantly  rationalistic  before 
the  Revolution,  though  the  mass  of  the  nation  certainly 
was  not. 

It  is  necessary  to  deprecate  Mr.  Leck\''s  statement  {Ration- 
alism in  Europe,  i,  176)  that  "  Raynal  has  taken,  with  Diderot, 
a  place  in  French  literature  which  is  probably  permanent" — an 
estimate  as  far  astray  as  the  declaration  on  the  same  page  that 
the  English  deists  are  buried  in  "  unbroken  silence."  Raynal's 
vogue  in  his  day  was  indeed  immense  (cp.  Morley,  Diderot, 
ch.  xv)  ;  and  Edmond  Scherer  {Etudes  sur  la  litt.  du  i8e  Siecle, 
1891,  pp.  277-8)  held  that  Raynal's  Histoire  philosophique  des 
deux  Indes  had  had  more  influence  on  the  French  Revolution 
than  even  Rousseau's  Contrat  Social.  But  the  book  has  long 
been  discredited  (cp.  Scherer,  pp.  275-6).  Although  the  first 
edition  (1770)  passed  the  censure  only  by  means  of  bribery,  and 
the  second  was  publicly  burned,  and  its  author  forced  to  leave 
France,  he  was  said  to  reject,  in  religion,  "  only  the  pope,  hell. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  233 


and  monks  "  {Id.  p.  286)  ;  and  most  of  the  anti-religious  decla- 
mation in  the  Histoire  is  said  to  be  from  the  pen  of  Diderot, 
who  wrote  it  very  much  at  random,  at  Raynal's  request. 

No  list  of  orthodox  names  remotely  comparable  with 
these  can  be  drawn  from  the  literature  of  France,  or 
indeed  of  any  other  country  of  that  time.  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau  (1712-1778),  the  one  other  pre-eminent  figure, 
though  not  an  anti-Christian  propagandist,  is  distinctly 
on  the  side  of  deism.  In  the  Contrat  Social,^  writing 
with  express  approbation  of  Hobbes,  he  declares  that 
"the  Christian  law  is  at  bottom  more  injurious  than 
useful  to  the  sound  constitution  of  the  State  ";  and  even 
the  famous  Confession  of  Faith  of  a  Savoyard  Vicar  in 
the  Emile  is  anti-revelationist,  and  practically  anti- 
clerical. He  was  accordingly  anathematised  ;  and, 
although  his  temperamental  way  of  regarding  things 
has  a  clear  affinity  with  some  later  religious  philosophy 
of  a  more  systematic  sort,  he  undoubtedly  made  for 
freethought  as  well  as  for  the  revolutionary  spirit  in 
general.  Thus  the  cause  of  Christianity  stood  almost 
denuded  of  intellectually  eminent  adherents  in  the  France 
of  1789  ;  for  even  among  the  writers  who  had  dealt  with 
public  questions  without  discussing  religion,  or  who  had 
criticised  Rousseau  and  the  philosophes — as  the  Abbes 
Mably,  Morellet,  Millot  —  the  tone  was  essentially 
rationalistic. 

It  has  been  justly  enough  argued,  concerning  Rousseau 
(see  below,  p.  253),  that  the  generation  of  the  Revolution  made 
him  its  prophet  in  his  own  despite,  and  that  had  he  lived 
twenty  vears  longer  he  would  have  been  its  vehement  adver- 
sary. But  this  does  not  alter  the  facts  as  to  his  influence.  A 
great  writer  of  emotional  genius,  like  Rousseau,  inevitably 
impels  men  beyond  the  range  of  his  own  ideals,  as  in  recent 
times  Ruskin  and  Tolstoy,  both  anti-Socialists,  have  led  thou- 
sands towards  Socialism.  In  his  own  generation  and  the  next, 
Rousseau  counted  essentially  for  criticism  of  the  existing  order; 
and  it  was  the  revolutionaries,  never  the  conservatives,  who 
acclaimed  him.  De  Tocqueville  {Hist,  philos.  du  rcgne  de 
Louis  XV,    1849,   i,   33)   speaks  of  his  "  impiete  dogmatique." 

'   Liv.  i,  ch.  S. 


234  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Martin  du  Theil,  in  liis  /.  /.  Rousseau  apologiste  de  la  religion 
chrctienne  (2e  edit.  1840),  makes  out  his  case  by  identifyins^ 
emotional  deisni  with  Christianity,  as  did  Rousseau  himself 
when  he  insisted  that  "  the  true  Christianity  is  onlv  natural 
reliii^ion  well  explained."  Rousseau's  praise  of  the  ijospel  and 
oi  the  character  of  Jesus  was  such  as  many  deists  acquiesced 
in.  Similar  language,  in  the  mouth  of  Matthew  Arnold,  gave 
rather  more  offence  to  Gladstone,  as  a  believing  Christian,  than 
did  the  language  of  simple  unbelief;  and  a  recent  Christian 
polemist,  at  the  close  of  a  copious  monograph,  has  repudiated 
the  association  of  Rousseau  with  the  faith  (see  J.  F.  Nourrisson, 
/.  /.  Rousseau  et  le  Rousseauisme,  1903,  p.  497  sq.).  What  is 
true  of  him  is  that  he  was  more  religiously  a  theist  than 
Voltaire,  whose  impeachment  of  Providence  in  the  poem  o\\  the 
Earthquake  of  Lisbon  he  sought  strenuoush'  though  not  very 
persuasively  to  refute  in  a  letter  to  the  author.  But,  with  all 
his  manifold  inconsistencies,  which  may  be  worked  down  to  the 
neurosis  so  painfully  manifest  in  his  life  and  in  his  relations  to 
his  contemporaries,  he  never  writes  as  a  believer  in  the  dogmas 
of  Christianity  or  in  the  principle  of  revelation  ;  and  it  was  as  a 
deist  that  he  was  recognised  by  his  Christian  contemporaries. 
The  work  of  the  Abbe  Bergier,  Le  Deisme  refute  par  hii-meme 
(1765,  and  later),  takes  the  form  of  letters  addressed  to  Rousseau, 
and  is  throughout  an  attack  on  his  works,  especially  the  AV/n'/f. 
When,  therefore,  Buckle  (i-vol.  ed.  p.  475)  speaks  of  him  as 
not  having  attacked  Christianity,  and  Mr.  Morley  {Rousseau, 
cli.  xiv)  treats  him  as  creating  a  religious  reaction  against  the 
deists,  they  do  not  fully  represent  his  influence  on  his  time.  As 
we  have  seen,  he  stimulated  Voltaire  to  new  audacities  by  his 
example. 

19.  A  certain  broad  development  may  be  traced 
throughout  the  century.  Montesquieu,  who  in  his 
early  Persian  Letters  (1721)  had  revealed  himself  as 
"  fundamentally  irreligious,"'  proceeded  in  his  masterly 
little  book  on  the  Greatness  and  Decadence  of  the  Romans 
(1734)  and  his  famous  Spirit  of  Laws  (1748)  to  treat  the 
problems  of  human  history  in  an  absolutely  secular  and 
scientific  spirit,  making  only  a  few  such  polite  allusions 
to  religion-  as  were  advisable  in  an  age  when  all  heretical 
v/orks  were  suppressible.     In  his  posthumous  Pensees 

'  Lanson,  p.  702.  The  Persian  Letters,  like  the  Provinciat  Letters  of 
Pascal,  had  to  be  printed  at  Rouen  and  published  at  Amsterdam. 

-  "  Au  point  de  vue  religieux,  Montesquieu  tirait  poliment  son  coup  de 
chapeau  au  christianisme."     Lanson,  p.  714. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  235 


his  anti-clericalism  is  sufficiently  emphatic.  "  Church- 
men," he  writes,  "  are  interested  in  keeping  the  people 
ignorant."  He  expresses  himself  as  a  convinced  deist, 
and,  with  no  great  air  of  conviction,  as  a  believer  in 
immortality.  But  there  his  faith  ends.  "  I  call  piety," 
he  says,  "a  malady  of  the  heart,  which  plants  in  the  soul 
a  malady  of  the  most  ineradicable  kind."  "  The  false 
notion  of  miracles  comes  of  our  vanity,  which  makes  us 
believe  we  are  important  enough  for  the  Supreme  Being 
to  upset  Nature  on  our  behalf."  "Three  incredibilities 
among  incredibilities  :  the  pure  mechanism  of  animals 
[the  doctrine  of  Descartes];  passive  obedience  ;  and  the 
infallibility  of  the  Pope."'  Even  in  his  lifetime,  Jesuits 
and  Jansenists  combined  to  attack  the  Spirit  of  Laws, 
which  was  denounced  at  an  assembly  of  the  clergy,  put 
on  the  Roman  Index,  and  prohibited  by  the  censure 
until  Malesherbes  came  into  office  in  1750."  By  this 
time  the  repute  of  Voltaire  and  others  had  made  the  idea 
of  unbelief  privately  familiar,  and  thereafter  the  move- 
ment rapidly  deepens,  the  authorities  zealously  adver- 
tising the  arch-critic  by  causing  many  of  his  freethinking 
books  to  be  publicly  burnt  by  the  hangman,  and  putting 
others  under  the  censure. ^  With  a  friend  like  Males- 
herbes at  headquarters,  official  condemnation  of  a  book 
tended  more  than  ever  to  promote  its  sale.  It  is  told  of 
him  that  he  once  warned  Diderot  that  there  would  be 
an  official  raid  next  day  on  his  editorial  premises  in 
connection  with  the  Encyclopedie ;  and  when  Diderot 
protested  that  he  could  not  within  the  time  get  all  his 
papers  removed  and  put  in  safety,  Malesherbes  replied  : 
"Send    them    to  my   office:   they  will   be   safe  there"; 

'  Pensees  Diverses :  De  la  religion.  -  Lanson,  p.  714,  note. 

3  The  Lettres  pliiiosophiqucs  (otherwise  the  Lcttrcs  anglaises)  were 
so  treated  on  their  appearance  in  1734,  and  the  bookseller  put  in  the 
Bastille  ;  the  Voix  du  Sage  et  du  Peuple  was  officially  and  clerically  con- 
demned in  1751  ;  the  poem  on  Natural  Religion  (otherwise  A'«/';<ra/Z«w) 
was  burned  at  Paris  in  1758;  Candide  at  Geneva  in  1759;  and  the 
Dictionnaire  philosophique  at  Geneva  in  1764  ;  and  many  of  his  minor 
pseudonymous  performances  had  the  same  advertisement.  But  even 
the  Henriade,  the  Charles  XII,  and  the  first  chapters  of  the  Siccle  de 
Louis  XI F  were  prohibited. 


236  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

which  was    accordingly  done,   with    the    promised    im- 
punity.' 

20.  Alongside  of  the  more  strictly  literary  or  humanist 
movement,  there  went  on  one  of  a  scientific  kind,  which 
divided  into  two  lines,  a  speculative  and  a  practical. 
On  the  former  the  philosopher  La  Mettrie  gave  a 
powerful  initial  push  by  his  materialistic  theses  ;  and 
others  after  him  continued  the  impulse.  La  Mettrie 
produced  his  Natural  History  of  the  Mind  in  1745  \^  and 
in  1746  appeared  the  Essay  on  the  Origin  of  Human 
Knorvledge  of  the  Abbe  Condillac,  both  essentially 
rationalistic  and  anti-theological  works,  though  differing 
in  their  psychological  positions,  Condillac  being  a  non- 
materialist,  though  a  strong  upholder  of  "  sensism." 
The  impulse  towards  physical  science  was  further  rein- 
forced by  BuFFON,  who  like  the  others  was  a  freethinker, 
though  like  them  he  avoided  religious  issues.  La 
Mettrie  followed  up  his  system  with  the  works  H Homme 
Plante  and  H Homme  Machine  (1748),  the  second  of 
which,  published  at  Leyden^  and  wickedly  dedicated  to 
the  pious  Baron  von  Haller,  was  burned  by  order  of  the 
magistrates,  its  author  being  at  the  same  time  expelled 
from  Holland.  Though  he  professed  to  think  the 
"  balance  of  probability  "  was  in  favour  of  the  existence 
of  a  personal  God, '^  his  other  writings  gave  small  support 
to  the  hypothesis.  It  is  notable  that  he,  the  typical 
materialist  of  his  age,  seems  to  have  been  one  of  its 
kindliest  men,  by  the  consent  of  all  who  knew  him.^ 

'  Mdmoires,  etc.,  de  Diderot,  ed.  1841,  ii,  352.     {M d moires  par  sa  fille.^ 

^  Published  anonymously  as  a  translation  from  the  English  :  Histoire 

naturellede  rAme,  traduite  de  TAnglais  de  M.  Charp,  par  feu  M.  H ,  de 

I'Acadt^mie  des  Sciences.     A  La  Haye,  1745. 

3  By  Elie  Luzac,  to  whom  is  ascribed  the  reply  entitled  L'Homine  plus 
que  Machine  ( 1748  also). 

•*  Soury,  Br^viaire  de  I'hist.  dii  matdrialisme ,  p.  689. 

5  Lang-e,  Gesch.  des  Materialismus,  I,  326  sq.  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  78-80)  ; 
Sour}',  pp.  663,  666-668  ;  \ oXtKxre,  Ho7ndlie  surl'athdisme,  end.  The  con- 
ventional denunciation  of  La  Mettrie  (endorsed  by  Mr.  Morley,  Voltaire, 
p.  122)  proceeds  upon  those  of  his  writings  in  which  he  discussed  sexual 
questions  with  absolute  scientific  freedom.  He,  however,  insisted  that 
his  theoretic  discussion  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  his  practice  ; 
and  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  lived  otherwise  than  as  most  men  did  in 
his  age  and  ours.  Still,  the  severe  censure  passed  oii  him  by  the  kindly 
Diderot  seems  to  convict  him  of,  at  least,  great  levity  of  character. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  237 

A  more  general   influence,  naturally,  attached  to  the 
simple  concrete   handling  of  scientific  problems.     The 
interest   in    such    questions,   noticeable    in    England    at 
the  Restoration    and    radiating  thence,   is    seen  widely 
diffused  in   France  after  the  publication   of  Fontenelle's 
Entretiens,   and   thenceforward   it   rapidly    strengthens. 
Barren    theological    disputations   set    men     not    merely 
against     theology     but     upon     the    study    of     Nature, 
where    real     knowledge    was   visibly    possible.        Even 
in      hidebound      Protestant     Switzerland,      the      sheer 
ennui    of    Puritanism    is  seen  driving   the   descendants 
of    the    Huguenot    refugees    to    the    physical    sciences 
for  an    interest    and    an    occupation,    before    any    free- 
thinking   can    safely    be  avowed  ;    and    in    France,    as 
Buckle  has  shown  in  abundant  detail,  the  study  of  the 
physical    sciences    became    for   many  years    before    the 
Revolution  almost  a   fashionable    mania.     And    at  the 
start  the  church  had  contrived  that  such  study  should 
rank   as    unbelief,   and    so    make    unbelievers.       When 
Buffon   in   1749  published    his   Histoire   Natiirelle,   the 
delight  which  its  finished  style  gave  to  most  readers  was 
paralleled   by  the  wrath  which  its   T/ieorie  de  la  Terre 
aroused    among    the   clergy.     After    much    discussion, 
Buffon    received   early  in   1751   from    the    Sorbonne   an 
official  letter  specifying   as  reprehensible    in    his    book 
fourteen   propositions  which  he  was  invited  to  retract. 
He  stoically  obeyed  in  a  declaration  to  the  effect  that  he 
had  "  no  intention  to  contradict  the  text  of  Scripture,"  and 
that  he    believed  "  most  firmly  all    there  related  about 
the    creation,"  adding  "I    abandon    everything    in   my 
book  respecting  the  formation  of  the  earth."'     During 
the  rest  of  his  life  he  outwardly  conformed  to  religious 
usage,   but  all   men  knew  that  in  his  heart  he  believed 
what  he   had  written  ;  and  the   memory  of  the  affront 
that  the  church  had  thus  put  upon  so  honoured  a  student 
helped  to  identify  her  cause  no  less  with  ignorance  than 
with  insolence  and  oppression.      For  all  such   insults, 

'  Lyell,  Principles  of  Geology,  12th  ed.  1875,  i,  57-58. 


23S  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

and   for  the  long  roll  of  her  cruelties,  the   church  was 
soon  to  pay  a  tremendous  penalty. 

But  science,  like  theology,  had  its  schisms,  and  the 
rationalising  camp  had  its  own  strifes.  Maupertuis, 
for  instance,  is  remembered  mainly  as  one  of  the  victims 
of  the  mockery  of  Voltaire  ;  yet  he  was  really  an 
energetic  man  of  science,  and  had  preceded  Voltaire  in 
setting  up  in  France  the  Newtonian  against  the  Cartesian 
physics.  In  \\\s  System  of  Nature  (not  to  be  confused 
with  the  later  work  of  d'Holbach  under  the  same  title) 
he  in  1751  propounded  a  new  version  of  the  hylozoisms 
of  ancient  Greece,  and  at  the  same  time  anticipated 
some  of  the  special  philosophic  positions  of  Kant.' 
Next  in  the  materialistic  series  came  J.  B.  Robinet, 
whose  Nature  (1761)  is  a  remarkable  attempt  to  reach  a 
strictly  naturalistic  conception  of  things.'  He  founds 
at  once  on  Descartes  and  Leibnitz,  but  in  his  Philo- 
sopliical  Considerations  on  the  natural  gradation  of  living 
forms  (1768)  he  definitely  sets  aside  theism  as  illusory, 
and  puts  ethics  on  a  strictly  scientific  and  human  footing, 3 
extending  the  arguments  of  Hume  and  Hutcheson 
somewhat  on  the  lines  of  Mandeville.  On  another  line 
of  reasoning  a  similar  application  of  Mandeville's  thesis 
had  already  been  made  by  Helvetius  in  his  T^-aite  de 
r Esprit''  (1758),  a  work  which  excited  a  hostility  now 
difficult  to  understand,  but  still  reflected  in  censures  no 
less  surprising.5  Its  faults  are  lack  of  system,  undue 
straining  after    popularity,    some    hasty  generalisation, 

'  Soury,  p.  579.  The  later  speculations  of  Maupertuis  b)'  their 
extravagance  discredited  the  earlier. 

-  Lang-e,  ii,  27,  29  ;  Soury,  pp.  603-644. 

3  Soury,  pp.  596-600  ;   Langfe,  ii,  27. 

''  This  may  best  be  translated  Treatise  on  the  Mind. 

5  One  of  the  worst  misrepresentations  in  theological  literature  is  the 
account  of  Helvt^tius  by  the  late  Principal  Cairns  (Unbelief  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  1881,  p.  158)  as  appealing  to  government  "to 
promote  luxury,  and,  through  luxurj',  public  good,  by  abolishing  all 
those  laws  that  cherish  a  false  modesty  and  restrain  libertinage." 
Helvetius  simply  pressed  the  consequences  of  the  existing  theory  of 
luxury,  which  for  his  own  part  he  disclaimed.  De  V Esprit,  Disc,  ii,  ch. 
15.  Dr.  Piinjer  (i,  462)  falls  so  far  below  his  usual  standard  as  to  speak 
of  Helvt^tius  in  a  similar  fashion.  As  against  such  detraction  it  is  fitting 
to  note  that  Helvetius,  like  La  Mettrie,  was  one  of  the  most  lovable 
and  most  beloved  men  of  his  time. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  239 


and  a  greater  concern  for  paradox  than  for  persuasion  ; 
but  it  abounds  in  acuteness  and  critical  wisdom,  and  it 
definitely  and  seriously  founds  public  ethics  on  utility/ 
Its  most  serious  error,  the  assumption  that  all  men  are 
born  with  equal  faculties,  and  that  education  is  the  sole 
differentiating-  force,  was  repeated  in  our  own  age  by 
John  Stuart  Mill  ;  but  in  Helvetius  the  error  is  balanced 
by  the  thoroughly  sound  and  profoundly  important 
thesis  that  the  general  superiorities  of  nations  are  the 
result  of  their  culture-conditions  and  politics."  The  over- 
balance of  his  stress  on  self-interest^  is  an  error  easily 
soluble.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  the  memorable 
testimony  of  Beccaria  that  it  was  the  work  of  Helvetius 
that  inspired  him  to  his  great  effort  for  the  humanising 
of  penal  laws  and  policy.*  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  such  fruits  can  be  claimed  for  the  teachings  of  the 
whole  of  the  orthodox  moralists  of  the  age.  For  the 
rest,  Helvetius  is  not  to  be  ranked  among-  the  p-reat 
abstract  thinkers  ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  his  thinkino- 
wenton  advancing  to  the  end.  Always  greatly  influenced 
by  Voltaire,  he  did  not  philosophically  harden  as  did 
his  master  ;  and  though  in  his  posthumous  work,  Les 
Progres  de  la  Raison  dans  la  recherche  du  TV^/ (published 
in  1775),  he  stands  for  deism  against  atheism,  the 
argument  ends  in  the  pantheism  to  which  Voltaire  had 
once  attained,  but  did  not  adhere. 

21.  Over  all  of  these  men,  and  even  in  some  measure 
over  Voltaire,  Diderot  (17 13-1784)  stands  pre-eminent, 
on  retrospect,  for  variety  of  power  and  depth  and 
subtlety  of  thought ;  though  for  these  very  reasons,  as 
well  as  because  some  of  his  most  masterly  works  were 
never  printed  in  his  lifetime,  he  was  less  of  a  recognised 
popular   force   than   many   of   his  friends.      In   his   own 

^  As  Mr.  Morley  notes,  Bentham  acknowledged  Helvetius  as  his 
teacher  and  inspirer.     Diderot,  ed.  1SS4,  p.  329. 

-  De  I'Esprit,  Disc,  iii,  ch.  30. 

3  Cp.  Mr.  Morley's  criticism,  Diderot,  pp.  331-2. 

••  Beccaria's  Letter  to  Morellet,  cited  in  ch.  i  of  Mr.  J.  A.  Farrer's  ed. 
of  the  Crimes  and  Punishments,  p.  6.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  partial 
reform  effected  earlier  in  England  by  Oglethorpe,  on  behalf  of  imprisoned 
debtors  (1730-2),  belongs  to  the  time  of  propagandist  deism  there. 


240  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


mental  history  he  reproduces  the  course  of  the  French 
thought  of  his  time.     Beginning  as  a  deist,  he  assailed 
the  contemporary  materialists  ;  in  the  end,    with   what- 
ever of   inconsistency,   he  was  substantially  an  atheist 
and  a  materialist.'     It  is  recorded  that  his  last  words  in 
serious  conversation  were  :  "The  beginning  of  philosophy 
is  incredulity";  and  it  may  be  inferred  from  his  writings 
that  his  first  impulses  to  searching  thought  came  from 
his  study  of  Montaigne,  who  must  always  have  been  for 
him  one  of  the  most  congenial  of  spirits.-     At  an  early 
stage  of  his  independent  mental  life  we  find  him  turning 
to  the   literature   which   in   that  age  yielded  to  such  a 
mind  as  his  the  largest  measure  both  of  nutriment  and 
stimulus — the  English.      In    1745   he  translated  Shaftes- 
bury's Inquiry  concerning    Virtue  and  Merit ;    and  he 
must    have    read    with    prompt   appreciation    the    other 
English   freethinkers  then  famous.      Ere  long,  however, 
he   had  risen  above  the  deistical  plane  of  thought,  and 
grappled  with   the   fundamental   issues  which  the  deists 
took  for  granted,  partly  because  of   an   innate  bent  to 
psychological    analysis,    partly    because    he    was    more 
interested     in    scientific    problems     than     in    scholarly 
research.      The   Pensees   Pliilosopliiques^     published    in 
1746,  really  deserve  their  name  ;  and  though  they  exhibit 
him  as  still  a  satisfied  deist,   and  an  opponent  of  the 
constructive  atheism  then   beginning  to  suggest  itself, 
they  contain  abstract   reasonings  sufficiently  disturbing 
to  the  deistic   position. ^     The  Promenade  du  Sceptique 
(written    about    1747,    published     posthumously)    goes 
further,  and  presents  explicitly  the  reply  to  the  design 
argument  which   was  adopted   by  Hume.     Then  comes 

'  Cp.  Soury's  contention  (p.  577)  that  we  sHall  never  make  an  atheist 
and  a  materialist  out  of  "  this  enthusiastic  artist,  this  poet-pantheist  " 
(citingf  Rosenkranz  in  support),  with  his  own  admissions,  pp.  589-590, 
and  with  Mr.  Morley's  remarks,  pp.  2,Z^  401,418.  See  also  Langfe,  i,  310 
sq.  ;  ii,  63  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  32,  256).  Lange  points  out  in  this  connection 
(i,  310)  that  the  Hegelian  schema  of  philosophic  evolution,  "with  its 
sovereign  contempt  for  chronology,"  has  wrought  much  confusion  as  to 
the  real  developments  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 

^  Cp.  Morley,  Diderot,  ed.  1884,  p.  32. 

3  E.g.  §  21. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  241 


the  Letter  on  the  Blind,  for  the  use  of  those  who  see 
(1749),  in  which  a  logical  rebuttal  alike  of  the  ethical 
and  the  cosmological  assumptions  of  theism,  developed 
from  hints  in  the  Pensees,  is  put  in  the  mouth  of  the 
blind  English  mathematician,  Professor  Sanderson.  It 
is  not  surprising  that  whereas  the  Pensees  had  been, 
with  some  other  books,  ordered  by  the  Paris  Parlement 
to  be  burnt  by  the  common  hangman,  the  Lettre  sur  les 
Aveiigles  led  to  his  arrest  and  imprisonment.  Both  had 
of  course  been  published  without  license  ;'  but  the 
second  book  was  more  than  a  defiance  of  the  censorship  : 
it  was  a  challenge  alike  to  the  philosophy  and  the  faith 
of  Christendom  ;  and  as  such  could  not  have  missed 
denunciation. "" 

But  Diderot  was  not  the  kind  of  man  to  be  silenced 
by  menaces.  In  the  famous  Sorbonne  thesis  of  the 
Abbe  de  Prades  (1751),  calling  in  question  the  positions 
of  theism,  he  was  believed  to  have  a  considerable  share  ; 
and  when  De  Prades  was  condemned  and  deprived  of 
his  license  (1752),  Diderot  wrote  in  whole  or  in  part  the 
Apology  which  defended  his  positions  and  arraigned  the 
Jansenists  ;  imputing  to  their  fanaticism  and  superstition, 
their  wrangles  and  their  sectarian  bitterness,  the  discredit 
which  among  thinking  men  had  latterly  fallen  upon 
church  and  creed  alike.  ^  Thenceforward  he  never 
faltered  on  his  path.  It  is  his  peculiar  excellence  to  be 
an  original  and  innovating  thinker  not  only  in  philosophy 
but  in  psychology,  in  aesthetics,  in  ethics,  in  dramatic 
art  ;  and  his  endless  and  miscellaneous  labours  in  the 
Encyclopedie,  of  which  he  was  the  most  loyal  and 
devoted   producer,    represent  an  extraordinary  range  of 

'  The  Lettre  purports,  like  sp  many  other  books  of  that  and  the  next 
generation,  to  be  published  "A  Londres." 

-  Diderot's  daug-hter  in  her  memoir  of  him  speaks  of  his  imprisonment 
in  the  Bastille  as  broug-ht  about  through  the  resentment  of  a  lady 
of  whom  he  had  spoken  slightingly  ;  but  the  narrative  is  untrustworthy. 
The  prosecution  was  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  period,  and  the  earlier 
Pensees  were  made  part  of  the  case  against  him.  Delort,  Hist,  de  la 
detention  des philosophes,  1829,  ii,  208-216.  Buckle  (i-vol.  ed.  p.  425)  does 
not  seem  to  have  fully  read  the  Lettre,  which  he  describes  as  merely 
discussing  the  differentiation  of  thought  and  sensation  among  the  blind. 

3  Cp.  ISIorley,  Diderot,  pp.  98-99. 

VOL.    II  R 


242  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


interests.      He  suffered  from  his  position  as  a  hack  writer 
and  as  a  forced  dissembler  in  his  articles  on  religious 
matters  ;  and  there  is   probably  a  very  real   connection 
between  his  compulsory  insincerities  in  the  Encyclopedie 
— to  say  nothing  of  the  official  prosecution   of  that  and 
of  others  of  his  works — and  his  misdeeds   in  the  way  of 
indecent  fiction.      When    organised  society  is  made  to 
figure  as  the  heartless  enemy  of  thinking  men,  it  is  no 
great  wonder  if  they  are  careless  at  times  about  the  effect 
of  their  writings  ox\  society.     But  it  stands  to  his  lasting 
honour    that    his   sufferings   at    the    hands    of    priests, 
printers,  and  parlements  never  soured  his  natural  good- 
ness  of  heart.'     Having   in    his  youth  known  a  day's 
unrelieved  hunger,  he  made  a  vow  that  he  would  never 
refuse  help  to  any  human  being  ;  and,  says  his  daughter, 
no    vow   was   ever    more    faithfully    kept.       No    one  in 
trouble  was  ever  turned  away  from  his  door  ;  and  even 
his  enemies  were  helped   when  they  were  base  enough 
to  beg  of  him.     It  seems   no  exaggeration  to  say  that 
the  bulk  of  his  life  was  given  to   helping  other  people, 
physically  and  mentally  ;  and  the   indirect  effect  of  his 
work,   which    is  rather   intellectually  disinterested    than 
didactic,  is  no  less  liberative  and  humanitarian.     "  To  do 
good,  and  to  find  truth,"  were  his  mottoes  for  life.     He 
was,    in    his   way,    as    beneficent   as    Voltaire,    without 
Voltaire's  faults  of  private   malice  ;  and  his  life's  work 
was    a    great    ministry  of   light.      It  was    Goethe    who 
said   of  him   in  the  next  generation  that  "  whoever  holds 
him     or    his    doings    cheaply    is    a     Philistine."      His 
large    humanity    reaches     from    the    planes    of    expert 
thought  to  that   of  popular  feeling  ;  and   while   by  his 
Letter    on    the    Blind   he    could    advance    speculative 
psychology    and     pure    philosophy,    he    could    by    his 
tale    The    Nun    {La    Re/igeuse,     written     about     1760, 
published    1796)   enlist  the    sympathies    of    the     people 
against  the  rule  of  the  church. 

'  Buckle's  account  of  him  (i-vol.  ed.  p.  426)  as  "burning-  with  hatred 
against  his  persecutors  "  after  his  imprisonment  seems  overdrawn.  He 
was  a  poor  hater. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  243 

22.  With  Diderot  were  specially  associated,  in  different 
ways,  D'Alembert,  the  mathematician,  for  some  years 
his  special  colleague  on  the  Encyclopedic,  and  Baron 
D'HoLBACH.  The  former,  one  of  thestaunchest  friends 
of  Voltaire,  though  a  less  invincible  fighter  than  Diderot, 
counted  for  practical  freethought  by  his  miscellaneous 
articles,  his  little  book  on  the  Jesuits  (1765),  his  Pensees 
Philosophiqiies ,  his  physics,  and  the  general  rationalism 
of  his  Preliminary  Discourse  to  the  Encyclopedie. 
D'HoLBACH,  a  naturalised  German  of  large  fortune, 
was  on  the  other  hand  one  of  the  most  strenuous  propa- 
gandists of  freethought  in  his  age.  Imitating  the  tactic 
of  Voltaire,  he  produced,  with  some  assistance  from 
Diderot,  Naigeon,  and  others,  a  whole  series  of  anti- 
Christian  treatises  under  a  variety  of  pseudonyms  ;'  and 
his  principal  work,  the  famous  System  of  Nature  {i'j']o), 
was  put  out  under  the  name  of  Mirabaud,  an  actual 
person,  then  dead.  Summing  up  as  it  does  with 
stringent  force  the  whole  anti-theological  propaganda 
of  the  age,  it  has  been  described  as  a  "thundering  engine 
of  revolt  and  destruction."'  It  was  the  first  published 
atheistic^  treatise  of  a  systematic  kind,  if  we  except  that 
of  Robinet,  issued  two  years  before  ;  and  it  significantly 
marks  the  era  of  modern  freethought  by  its  stern 
impeachment  of  the  sins  of  monarchy — here  carrying  on 
the  note  struck  by  Jean  Meslier  in  his  manuscript  of 
half-a-century  earlier.  Rather  a  practical  argument 
than  a  dispassionate  philosophic  research,  its  polemic 
against  human  folly  laid  it  open  to  the  regulation  retort 

'  See  a  full  list  of  his  works,  compiled  by  Julian  Hibbert,  prefixed  to 
Watson's  ed.  (1834  and  later)  of  the  English  translation  of  the  System  of 
Nature.  The  principal  freethinkingf  books  apart  from  that  work,  ascribed 
in  whole  or  in  part  to  d'Holbach,  are  : — Le  Christianisme  Di'voild,  1756, 
and  later  ;  La  Contagion  Sacr^e,  1768,  and  later  ;  Thdologie  Portative, 
1768,  and  later;  Histoire  critique  de  J(^sus  Christ,  about  1770;  Le  Bon 
Sens,  1772,  and  later  ;  La  politique  naturelle,  1774  ;  Systeme  social,  1774  ; 
La  morale  tmiverselle,  1776  ;  Ethocratie,  1776. 

^  Morley,  Diderot,  p.  341.  The  chapter  g-ives  a  good  account  of  the 
book.     Cp.  Lange,  i,  364  sq.  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  26  sq. )  as  to  its  materialism. 

3  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  English  translation  (3  vols.  3rd  ed.  1817  ; 
4th  ed.  1820)  deliberately  tampers  with  the  language  of  the  original  to 
the  extent  of  making  it  deistic.  This  perversion  has  been  by  oversight 
preserved  in  all  the  reprints. 


244  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

that  on  its  own  necessarian  principles  no  such  polemic 
was  admissible.  That  retort  is,  of  course,  ultimately 
invalid  when  the  denunciation  is  resolved  into  demon- 
stration. If,  however,  it  be  termed  "shallow"  on  the 
score  of  its  censorious  treatment  of  the  past,'  the  term 
will  have  to  be  applied  to  the  Hebrew  books,  to  the 
Gospel  Jesus,  to  Pascal,  Milton,  Carlyle,  Ruskin, 
and  a  good  many  other  prophets,  ancient  and  modern. 
The  synthesis  of  the  book  is  really  emotional  rather 
than  philosophic,  and  hortatory  rather  than  scien- 
tific. 

23.  The  death  of  d'Holbach  (1789)  brings  us  to  the 
French  Revolution.  By  that  time  all  the  great  free- 
thinking  propagandists  and  non-combatant  deists  of  the 
Voltairean  group  were  gone,  save  Condorcet.  Voltaire 
and  Rousseau  had  died  in  1778,  Helvetius  in  1771, 
Turgot  in  1781,  D'Alembert  in  1783,  Diderot  in  1784. 
After  all  their  labours,  only  the  educated  minority, 
broadly  speaking,  had  been  made  freethinkers  ;  and  of 
these,  despite  the  vogue  of  the  Systevi  of  Nature^  only 
a  minority  were  atheists.  Deism  prevailed,  as  we  have 
seen,  among  the  foremost  revolutionists  ;  but  atheism 
was  relatively  rare,  though  Voltaire,  impressed  by  the 
number  of  cultured  men  of  his  acquaintance  who  avowed 
it,  latterly  speaks'  of  them  as  very  numerous  ;  and  after 
1789  the  new  freethinking  works  run  to  critical  and 
ethical  attack  on  the  Christian  system  rather  than  on 
theism.  Volney  combined  both  lines  of  attack  in  his 
famous  Ruins  of  Empires  (1791)  ;  and  the  learned 
Dupuis,  in  his  voluminous  Origin  of  all  Cults  (1795), 
took  an  important  step,  not  yet  fully  reckoned  with  by 
later  mythologists,  towards  the  mythological  analysis 
of  the  Gospel  narrative.  After  these  vigorous  per- 
formances, the  popular  progress  of  French  freethought 

'  So  Mr.  Morley,  p.  347.  It  does  not  occur  to  Mr.  Morley,  and  to  the 
Comtists  who  take  a  similar  tone,  that  in  thus  disparaging  past  thinkers 
they  are  doing  exactly  the  thing  they  blame. 

^  Lettres  de  Memmius  a  Cicdron  (1771)  ;  Histoire  de  Jenni  (1775).  In 
the  earlier  article,  Athee,  in  the  D ictionnaire  Philosophique,  he  speaks  of 
having  met  in  France  very  good  physicists  who  were  atheists. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  245 

was  for  long  practically  suspended'  by  the  tumult  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  reaction  which  followed  it,  though 
Laplace  went  on  his  way  with  his  epoch-making  theory 
of  the  origin  of  the  solar  system,  for  which,  as  he  told 
Napoleon,  he  had  "  no  need  of  the  hypothesis  "  of  a  God. 
The  admirable  Condorcet  had  died,  perhaps  by  his 
own  hand,  in  1794,  when  in  hiding  from  the  Terrorists, 
leaving  behind  him  his  Esquisse  d'untablemt  liistorique 
des  progres  de  Vesprit  hiimain,  in  which  the  most 
sanguine  convictions  of  the  rationalistic  school  are 
reformulated  without  a  trace  of  bitterness  or  of  despair. 

24.  No  part  of  the  history  of  freethought  has  been 
more  distorted  than  that  at  which  it  is  embroiled  in  the 
French  Revolution.  The  conventional  view  in  Encrland 
still  is  that  the  Revolution  was  the  work  of  deists  and 
atheists,  but  chiefly  of  the  latter  ;  that  they  suppressed 
Christianity  and  set  up  a  worship  of  a  Goddess  of 
Reason,  represented  by  a  woman  of  the  town  ;  and  that 
the  bloodshed  of  the  Terror  represented  the  application 
of  their  principles  to  government,  or  at  least  the  political 
result  of  the  withdrawal  of  religious  checks.-  Those 
who  remember  in  the  briefest  summary  the  records  of 
massacre  connected  with  the  affirmation  of  religious 
beliefs — the  furious  strifes  of  Christian  sects  under  the 
Roman  Empire  ;  the  massacres  of  the  period  of  proga- 
gation  in  Northern  Europe,  from  Charlemagne  onwards  ; 
the  story  of  the  Crusades,  in  which  nine  millions  of 
human  beings  are  estimated  to  have  been  destroyed;  the 
generation  of  wholesale  murder  of  the  heretics  of 
Languedoc  by  the  Papacy  ;  the  protracted  savageries 
of  the  Hussite  War  ;  the  early  slaughter  of  Protestant 
heretics  in  France;  the  massacres  of  German  peasants 
and  Anabaptists;  the  reciprocal  persecutions  in  England; 
the  civil  strifes  of  sectaries  in  Switzerland  ;  the  ferocious 
wars  of  the   French   Huguenots  and  the  League  ;    the 

'  Thoug-h  in  1797  we  have  Mart^chal's  Code d' line  Socidtd d'hommes  sans 
Dieu,  and  in  1798  his  Pensifes  lihres  siir  les  pretres. 

-  Thus  Dr.  Cairns  {Unbelief  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  165)  gravely 
argfues  that  the  French  Revolution  proves  the  inefficacy  of  theism  with- 
out a  Trinity  to  control  conduct. 


246  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

long-drawn  agony  of  the  war  of  thirty  years  in  Germany  ; 
the  annihilation  of  myriads  of  Mexicans  and  Peruvians 
by  the  conquering  Spaniards  in  the  name  of  the  Cross — 
those  who  recall  these  things  need  spend  no  time  over 
the  proposition  that  rationalism  stands  for  a  removal  of 
restraints  on  bloodshed.  But  it  is  necessary  to  put 
concisely  the  facts  as  against  the  legend  in  the  case  of 
the  French  Revolution, 

{a)  That  many  of  the  leading  men  among  the  revolu- 
tionists were  deists  is  true  ;  and  the  fact  goes  to  prove 
that  it  was  chiefly  the  men  of  ability  in  France  who 
rejected  Christianity.  Of  a  number  of  these  the  normal 
attitude  was  represented  in  the  work  of  Necker,  Sur 
r importance  des  idees  religieuses  (1787),  which  repu- 
diated the  destructive  attitude  of  the  few,  and  may  be 
described  as  an  utterance  of  pious  theism  or  Unita- 
rianism.'  But  the  majority  of  the  Constituent  Assembly 
was  never  even  deistic  ;  it  professed  itself  cordially 
Catholic  ;^  and  the  atheists  there  might  be  counted  on 
the  fingers  of  one  hand. 

The  Abbe  Bergier,  in  answering  d'Holbach  {Exameii  du 
Materialisme,  ii,  ch.  i,  ^  i),  denies  that  there  has  been  any  wide 
spread  of  atheistic  opinion.  This  is  much  more  probable  than 
the  statement  of  the  Archbishop  of  Toulouse,  on  a  deputation 
to  the  king  in  1775,  that  "  le  monstrueux  atheisme  est  devenu 
I'opinion  dominante  "  (Soulavie,  Regne  de  Louis  XVI,  iii,  16; 
cited  by  Buckle,  i-vol.  ed.  p.  488,  note).  Joseph  Droz,  a 
monarchist  and  a  Christian,  writing  under  Louis  Philippe, 
sums  up  that  "the  atheists  formed  only  a  small  number  of 
adepts  "  {Hist,  de  la  Ri'gne  de  Louis  ATT",  ed.  1839,  p.  42). 
And  Rivarol,  who  at  the  time  of  writing  his  Lettres  a  M. 
Necher  was  substantially  an  atheist,  says  in  so  man}'  words 
that,  while  Rousseau's  "  Confession  of  a  Savoyard  Vicar"  was 
naturally  very  attractive  to  many,  such  a  book  as  the  Svsteme 

'  In  translation  (1788)  it  found  a  welcome  in  England  among-  church- 
men by  reason  of  its  pro-Christian  tone  and  its  general  vindication  of 
religious  institutions. 

^  Cp.  Aulard,  Le  Culte  de  la  Raison  et  le  Culte  de  V Eire  Supreme,  1892, 
pp.  17-19-  M-  Gazier  (Eludes  sur  I'histoire  religieuse  de  la  r^volutiofi 
fran^aise,  1S77,  PP-  4^'  '73'  '^9  sq.)  speaks  somewhat  loosely  of  a 
prevailing  anti-Christian  feeling  when  actually  citing  only  isolated 
instances,  and  giving  proofs  of  a  general  orthodoxy.  He  points  out 
the  complete  misconception  of  Thiers  on  the  subject  (p.  202). 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  247 

de  la  Nature,  "  were  it  as  attractive  as  it  is  tedious,  would  win 
nobody"  {CEtivres,  ed.  1852,  p.  134). 

Nor  were  there  lacking  vigorous  representatives  of 
orthodoxy  :  the  powerful  Abbe  Gregoire,  in  particular, 
was  a  convinced  Jansenist  Christian,  and  at  the  same 
time  an  ardent  democrat  and  anti-royalist.'  He  saw  the 
immense  importance  to  the  church  of  a  good  under- 
standing with  the  Revolution,  and  he  accepted  the 
constitution  of  1790.  With  him  went  a  very  large 
number  of  priests.  M.  Leonce  de  Lavergne,  who  was 
pious  enough  to  write  that  "  the  philosophy  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  had  the  audacity  to  lay  hands  on 
God  ;  and  this  impious  attempt  has  had  for  punishment 
the  revolutionary  expiation,"  also  admits  that  "of  the 
clergy,  it  was  not  the  minority  but  the  majority  which 
went  along  with  the  Tiers  Etat."^  Many  of  the  clergy, 
however,  being  refractory,  the  Assembly  pressed  its 
point,  and  the  breach  widened.  It  was  solely  through 
this  political  hostility  on  the  part  of  the  church  to  the 
new  constitution  that  any  civic  interference  with  public 
worship  ever  took  place.  Gregoire  was  extremely 
popular  with  the  advanced  types, ^  though  his  piety  was 
conspicuous  ;'^  and  there  were  not  a  few  priests  of  his 
way  of  thinking,^  among  them  being  some  of  the  ablest 
bishops.^  On  the  flight  of  the  king,  he  and  they  went 
with  the  democracy  ;  and  it  was  the  obstinate  refusal  of 
the  others  to  accept  the  constitution  that  provoked  the 
new  Legislative  Assembly  to  coerce  them.  Though  the 
new  body  was  more  anti-clerical  than  the  old,  however, 
it  was  simply  doing  what  successive  Protestant  monarchs 
had  done  in  England  and  Ireland  ;  and  probably  no 
Government  in  the  world  would  then  have  acted  other- 
wise in  a  similar  case.^     Patience  might  perhaps  have 

'  Gazier,  Atudes  stir  I'hist.  relig.  de  la  r^7'ol.  pp.  2,  4,  12,  19-21,  71,  etc. 

^  Les  Assemblies  Provinciales  sous  Lot/is  XVI,  1864,  pref.  pp.  viii-ix. 

3  Gazier,  L.  ii,  ch.  i.  "  Id.  p.  67. 

5  Id.  p.  69.  '^  Leonce  de  Lavergne,  as  cited. 

^  The  authority  of  Turg-ot  himself  could  be  cited  for  the  demand  that 
the  State  clerg-y  should  accept  the  constitution  of  the  State.  Cp.  Aulard, 
Lc  Culte  de  la  Raison  et  le  Culte  de  I'Etrc  Supreme,  p.  12  ;  Tissot,  Etude 
sur  Turgot,  1878,  p.  160. 


248  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


won  the  day  ;  but  the  Revolution  was  fighting  for  its 
life,  and  the  conservative  church,  as  all  men  knew,  was 
eager  to  strangle  it.  Had  the  clergy  left  politics  alone, 
or  simply  accepted  the  constitutional  action  of  the  State, 
there  would  have  been  no  religious  question.  To  speak 
of  such  a  body  of  priests,  who  had  at  all  times  been 
eager  to  put  men  to  death  for  heresy,  as  vindicating 
"  liberty  of  conscience  "  when  they  refused  fealty  to  the 
constitution,'  is  somewhat  to  strain  the  terms.  The 
expulsion  of  the  Jesuits  under  the  Old  Regime  had  been 
a  more  coercive  measure  than  the  demand  of  the 
Assembly  on  the  allegiance  of  the  State  clergy.  And 
all  the  while  the  reactionary  section  of  the  priesthood 
was  known  to  be  in  active  conspiracy  with  the  royalists 
abroad.  It  was  only  when,  in  1793,  the  conservative 
clergy  were  seen  to  be  the  great  obstacle  to  the  levy  of 
an  army  of  defence,  that  the  more  radical  spirits  began 
to  think  of  interfering  with  their  functions.^ 

ih)  For  the  rest,  the  legend  falsifies  what  took  place. 
The  facts  are  now  established  by  exact  documentary 
research. 3  The  Government  never  substituted  any 
species  of  religion  for  the  Catholic.^  The  Festival  of 
Reason  at  Notre  Dame  was  an  act  not  of  the  Convention 
but  of  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  the  Department ;  the 
Convention  had  no  part  in  promoting  it  ;  half  the 
members  stayed  away  when  invited  to  attend;  and  there 
was  no  Goddess  of  Reason  in  the  ceremony,  but  only  a 
Goddess  of  Liberty,  represented  by  an  actress  who 
cannot  even  be  identified. ^  Throughout,  the  devoutly 
theistic  Rousseau  was  the  chief  literary  hero  of  the 
movement.  The  two  executive  Committees  in  no  way 
countenanced  the  dechristianisation  of  the  churches,  but 
on  the  contrary  imprisoned  persons  who  removed 
church  properties  ;  and  these  in  turn  protested  that  they 

'  Gazier,  p.  113.  -  Aulard,  pp.  19-20. 

3  See  the  whole  details  in  the  definitive  work  of  M.  Aulard. 

■»  The  grave  misstatement  of  Michelet  on  this  head  is  exposed  by  M. 
Aulard,  p.  6a. 

5  Yet  it  is  customary  among-  Christians  to  speak  of  this  lady  in  the 
most  opprobrious  terms. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  249 


had  no  thouc^ht  of  abolishinsT  reli^rion.  The  acts  of 
irresponsible  violence  did  not  amount  to  a  hundredth 
part  of  the  "  sacrilege  "  wrought  in  Protestant  countries 
at  the  Reformation,  and  do  not  compare  with  the  acts 
charged  on  Cromwell's  troopers.  The  policy  of  inviting 
priests  and  bishops  to  abdicate  their  functions  was  strictly 
political  ;  and  the  Archbishop  Gobel  did  not  abjure 
Catholicism,  but  only  surrendered  his  office.  That  a 
number  of  priests  did  gratuitously  abjure  their  religion 
is  only  a  proof  of  what  was  well  known — that  a  good 
many  priests  were  simple  deists.  Diderot  in  a  letter  of 
1769  tells  of  a  day  which  he  and  a  friend  had 
passed  with  two  monks  who  were  atheists.  "One 
of  them  read  the  first  draft  of  a  very  fresh  and  very 
vigorous  treatise  on  atheism,  full  of  new  and  bold 
ideas  :  I  learned  with  edification  that  this  doctrine 
was  the  current  doctrine  of  their  cloisters.  For  the 
rest,  these  two  monks  were  the  '  big  bonnets  '  of  their 
monastery  :  they  had  intellect,  gaiety,  good  feeling, 
knowledge."^  And  a  priest  of  the  cathedral  of  Auxerre, 
Avhose  recollections  went  back  to  the  revolutionary 
period,  has  confessed  that  at  that  time  "philosophic" 
opinions  prevailed  in  most  of  the  monasteries.  His 
words  even  imply  that  the  unbelieving  monks  were  the 
majority." 

In  the  provinces,  where  the  movement  went  on  with 
various  degrees  of  activity,  it  had  the  same  general 
character.  "  Reason  "  itself  was  often  identified  with 
deity,  or  declared  to  be  an  emanation  thereof.  Hebert, 
commonly  described  as  an  atheist  for  his  share  in  the 
movement,  expressly  denied  the  charge,  and  claimed  to 
have  exhorted  the  people  to  read  the  Gospels  and  obey 
Christ.3  Even  Chaumette  was  not  an  atheist  ;^  and  the 
Prussian  Clootz,  who  probably  was,  had  certainly  no 
doctrinary    influence ;    while    the    two    or   three    other 


'  Mdmoires,  ed.  1841,  ii,  166. 

^  Pire  F.-J.-F.  Fortin,  Souvenirs,  Auxerre,  1867,  ii,  41 
3  See  the  speech  in  Aulard,  p.  240;  and  cp.  pp.  79-85. 
"  Id.  pp.  81-82. 


250  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

professed  atheists  of  the  Assembly  had  no   part  in  the 
public  action. 

(c)  Finally,  Robespierre  was  all  along  thoroughly 
hostile  to  the  movement:  in  his  character  of  Rousseauist 
and  deist  he  argued  that  atheism  was  "aristocratic  ";  he 
put  to  death  the  leaders  of  the  Cult  of  Reason  ;  and  he 
set  up  the  Worship  of  the  Supreme  Being  as  a  counter- 
move.  Broadly  speaking,  he  affiliated  to  Necker,  and 
stood  very  much  at  the  standpoint  of  the  English 
Unitarianism  of  the  present  day.  Thus  the  bloodshed 
of  the  Reign  of  Terror,  if  it  is  to  be  charged  on  any 
species  of  philosophic  doctrine  rather  than  on  the 
unscrupulous  policy  of  the  enemies  of  the  Revolution 
in  and  out  of  France,  stands  to  the  credit  of  the  belief 
in  a  God,  the  creed  of  Frederick,  Turgot,  Necker, 
Franklin,  Pitt,  and  Washington.  The  one  convinced 
and  reasoning  atheist  among  the  publicists  of  the 
time,  the  journalist  Salaville,'  opposed  the  Cult  of 
Reason  with  sound  and  serious  and  persuasive 
argument,  and  strongly  blamed  all  forcible  interference 
with  worship,  while  at  the  same  time  calmly  main- 
taining atheism  as  against  theism.  The  age  of  atheism 
had  not  come,  any  more  than  the  triumph  of  Reason. 

25.  The  anti-atheistic  and  anti-philosophic  legend  was 
born  of  the  exasperation  and  bad  faith  of  the  dethroned 
aristocracy,  themselves  often  unbelievers  in  the  day  of 
their  ascendency,  and,  whether  unbelievers  or  not, 
responsible  with  the  church  and  the  court  for  that  long 
insensate  resistance  to  reform  which  made  the  revolution 
inevitable.  In  the  life  of  the  brilliant  Rivarol,  who 
associated  with  the  noblesse  while  disdained  by  many 
of  them  because  of  his  obscure  birth,  we  may  read  the 
intellectual  history  of  the  case.  Brilliant  without 
patience,  keen  without  scientific  coherence,^  Rivarol  in 
1787  met  the  pious  deism  of  Necker  with  a  dialectic  in 

'  Concerning'  whom  see  Aulard,  pp.  86-96. 

^  Cp.  the  admissions  of  Curnier  {Rivarol,  sa  vie  et  scs  auvres,  1858, 
p.  149)  in  deprecation  of  Burke's  wild  Hkeningf  of  Rivarol's  journalism  to 
the  Annals  of  Tacitus. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  2ci 


which  cynicism  as  often  disorders  as  illuminates  the 
argument.  With  prompt  veracity  he  first  rejects  the 
ideal  of  a  beneficent  reign  of  delusion,  and  insists  that 
religion  is  seen  in  all  history  powerless  alike  to  overrule 
men's  passions  and  prejudices,  and  to  console  the 
oppressed  by  its  promise  of  a  reversal  of  earthly 
conditions  in  another  world.  But  in  the  same  breath, 
by  way  of  proving  that  the  atheist  is  less  disturbing  to 
convention  than  the  deist,  he  insists  that  the  unbeliever 
soon  learns  to  see  that  "  irreverences  are  crimes  against 
society";  and  then,  in  order  to  justify  such  conformity, 
asserts  what  he  had  before  denied.  And  the  self-contra- 
diction recurs.'  The  underlying  motive  of  the  whole 
polemic  is  simply  the  grudge  of  the  upper  class  diner- 
out  against  the  serious  and  conscientious  bourgeois  who 
strives  to  reform  the  existing  system.  Conscious  of 
being  more  enlightened,  the  wit  is  eager  at  once  to 
disparage  Necker  for  his  religiosity  and  to  discredit  him 
politically  as  the  enemy  of  the  socially  useful  ecclesias- 
tical order.  The  due  sequence  is  that  when  the 
Revolution  breaks  out  Rivarol  sides  with  the  court  and 
the  noblesse,  while  perfectly  aware  of  the  ineptitude  and 
malfeasance  of  both  y"  and,  living  in  exile,  proceeds  to 
denounce  the  philosophers  as  having  caused  the  over- 
turn by  their  universal  criticism.  In  1787  he  had 
declared  that  he  would  not  even  have  written  his 
Letters  to  Necker  if  he  were  not  certain  that  "  the  people 
does  not  read."  Then  the  people  had  not  read  the  philo- 
sophers any  more  than  it  did  him.  But  in  exile  he 
must  needs  frame  for  the  emigres  a  formula,  true  or 
false.  It  is  the  falsity  of  men  divided  against  them- 
selves, who  pay  themselves  with  recriminations  rather 
than  realise  their  own  deserts. ^  And  in  the  end  Rivarol 
is  but  a  deist. 


'   CEuvres,  ed.  cited,  pp.  136-140,  147-155. 

-  Cp.  the  critique  of  Sainte-Beuve,  prefixed  to  ed.  cited,  pp.  14-17,  and 
that  of  Ars^ne  Houssaye,  id.  pp.  31-33. 

3  Charles  Comte  is  thus  partly  inaccurate  in  saying-  (Traitdde  Legisla- 
tion, 1835,  i,  72)  that  the  charge  against  the  philosophers  began  "on 
the  day  on  which  there  was  set  up  a  government  in  France  that  sought 


252  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


If  the   slightest    attempt    be    made    to   analyse    the 
situation,  the  thesis  as  to  the  activity  of  the  philosophes 
must  at  once  be  restricted    to  the  cases  of   Rousseau, 
Raynal,    and     d'Holbach.       Voltaire    was    in     things 
political  a  conservative,  save  in  so  far  as  he  fought  for 
toleration   and  for  the  most    necessary  reforms.     Only 
by  heedless  misreading  or  malice  can  support  be  given 
to  the    pretence  that    Diderot  wrought  for  the  violent 
overthrow  of  the  existing   political   system.     A  phrase 
about   strangling    kings"    in    the    bowels   of    priests    is 
expressly  put  by  him  in  the  mouth  of  an  Eleiitheromane  or 
Liberty-maniac  ;'  which  shows  that  the  type  had  arisen 
in    his    lifetime    in    opposition    to    his    own    bias.     The 
tyranny  of  the  French  Government  he  did  indeed  detest, 
as  he  had  cause  to  do,  and  as  every  man  of  good  feeling 
did  with  him  ;  but  no  writing  of  his  wrought  measurably 
for  its  overthrow.^     Some  of  the  philosophers,  it  is  true, 
themselves  gave  colour  to  the  view  that  they  were  the 
makers  of  the  Revolution,  as  when  D'Alembert  said  to 
Romilly  that  "philosophy"  had  produced   in  his  time 
that  change  in  the  popular  mind  which  exhibited  itself 
in  the  indifference  with  which  they  received  the  news  of 
the  birth  of  the   dauphin. ^     The  error  is  none  the  less 
plain.      It  was  the  whole  political  and  social  evolution  of 
two  generations  that  had  wrought  the  change  ;  and  the 
people  were  still  for  the  most  part  believing  Catholics. 
Frederick    the     Great    was    probably    right    when    he 
reminded  the    more    optimistic    philosophers  that   their 
entire  public  did  not  number  above  200,000  people. 

And  this  is  the  answer  to  any  pretence  that  the 
Revolution  was  the  work  of  the  school  of  d'Holbach. 
Bergier    the     priest,     and     Rivarol    the     conservative 

to  re-establish  the  abuses  of  which  Ihey  had  soug-ht  the  destruction." 
What  is  true  is  that  the  chargfe,  framed  at  once  by  the  backers  of  the 
Old  Regime,  has  always  since  done  duty  for  reaction. 

'  Cp.  Morley,  Diderot,  p.  407.  Mr.  Morley  points  to  the  phrase  in 
another  form  in  a  letter  of  Voltaire's  in  1761.  It  really  derives  from 
Jean  Meslier,  who  quotes  it  from  an  unlettered  man  (Testament,  i,  19). 

=  As  Mr.  Morley  points  out,  Henri  Martin  absolutely  reverses  the 
purport  of  a  passage  in  order  to  convict  Diderot  of  justifying  regicide. 

^  Memoirs  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly,  3rd  ed.  1S41,  i,  46. 


FRANCE  AND  HOLLAND  253 

unbeliever,  alike  denied  that  d'Holbach's  systematic 
writings  had  any  wide  public.  Doubtless  the  same  men 
were  ready  to  eat  their  words  for  the  satisfaction  of 
vilifying  an  opponent.  It  has  always  been  the  way  of 
orthodoxy  to  tell  atheists  alternately  that  they  are  an 
impotent  handful,  and  that  they  are  the  ruin  of  society. 
But  by  this  time  it  ought  to  be  a  matter  of  elementary 
knowledge  that  a  great  political  revolution  can  be 
wrought  only  by  far-reaching  political  forces,  whether 
or  not  these  may  concur  with  a  propaganda  of 
rationalism  in  religion.'  If  any  "philosopher"  so-called 
is  to  be  credited  with  specially  promoting  the  Revolu- 
tion, it  is  either  Rousseau,  who  is  so  often  hailed  as  the 
engineer  of  a  religious  reaction,  and  whose  works,  as 
has  been  repeatedly  remarked,  •'  contain  much  that  is 
utterly  and  irreconcilably  opposed  "  to  the  Revolution, - 
or  Raynal,  who  was  only  anti-clerical,  not  anti-Christian, 
and  who  actually  censured  the  revolutionary  procedure. 
They  were  the  two  most  popular  writers  of  their  day 
who  dealt  with  social  as  apart  from  religious  or  philo- 
sophical issues,  and  to  both  is  imputed  a  general 
subversiveness.  But  here,  too,  the  charge  rests  upon 
a  sociological  fallacy.  Rousseau  was  influential  towards 
change  because  change  was  essential,  not  because  he 
was  restless.  He  was  influential  because  he  set  forth 
what  so  many  felt.  In  brief,  the  evils  of  the  Revolution 
lie  at  the  door  not  of  the  reformers,  but  of  the  men,  the 
classes,  and  the  institutions  which  first  provoked  and 
then  resisted  it.^ 


'  This  is  the  sufficient  comment  on  a  perplexmg  pag-e  of  Mr.  Morley's 
second  monograph  on  Burke  (pp.  1 10- 1 1 1),  which  I  have  never  been  able 
to  reconcile  with  the  rest  of  his  writing. 

^  Lecky,  Hist,  of  Englatid  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  small  ed.  vi,  263. 

3  On  this  complicated  issue,  which  cannot  be  here  handled  at  any  further 
length,  see  Professor  P.  A.  Wadia's  essay  The  Philosophers  and  the 
French  Revolution  (Social  Science  Series,  1904),  which,  however,  needs 
revision;  and  compare  the  argument  of  Nourrisson,  y.-y.  Rousseau  et  le 
Rousseauisme,  1903,  ch.  xx. 


254  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


§   II.    Germany. 

I.  When  two  generations  of  Protestant  strife  had 
turned  to  naught  the  intellectual  promise  of  the  Refor- 
mation, and  much  of  the  ground  first  won  by  it  had 
lapsed  to  Catholicism,  the  general  forward  movement 
of  European  thought  availed  to  set  up  in  Germany  as 
elsewhere  a  measure  of  critical  unbelief.  There  is 
abundant  evidence  that. the  Lutheran  clergy  not  only 
failed  to  hold  the  intelligence  of  the  country  with  them, 
but  in  large  part  fell  into  personal  disrepute.'  "The 
scenes  of  clerical  immorality,"  says  an  eminently 
orthodox  historian,  "are  enough  to  chill  one's  blood 
even  at  the  distance  of  two  centuries."''  A  Church 
Ordinance  of  1600  acknowledges  information  to  the 
effect  that  a  number  of  clergymen  and  schoolmasters  are 
guilty  of  "whoredom  and  fornication,"  and  commands 
that  "  if  they  are  notoriously  guilty  they  shall  be  sus- 
pended." Details  are  preserved  of  cases  of  clerical 
drunkenness  and  ruffianism  ;  and  the  women  of  the 
priests'  families  do  not  escape  the  pillory.^  It  is  noted 
that  "  the  great  moral  decline  of  the  clergy  was  con- 
fined chiefly  to  the  Lutheran  Church.  The  Reformed 
[Calvinistic]  was  earnest,  pious,  and  aggressive  ""^ — the 
usual  result  of  official  hostility. 

In  such  circumstances,  the  active  freethought  existing 
in  France  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
could  not  fail  to  affect  Germany;  and  even  before  the 
date  of  the  polemic  of  Garasse  and  Mersenne  there 
appeared  (16 15)  a  counterblast  to  the  new  thought  in 
the  Tlieologia  Naturalis  of  J.  H.  Alsted,  of  Frankfort, 
directed  adversiis  atheos,  Epintreos,  et  sopliistas  Jiiijiis 
temporis.    The  preface  to  this  solid  quarto  (a  remarkable 

'  Cp.  Pusey,  Histor.  Enquiry  into  the  Probable  Cmises  of  the  Rationalist 

Character of  the  Theology  of  Germany,  1828,  p.  79. 

^  Bishop  Hurst,  History  of  Rationalism,  ed.  1867,  p.  56. 

3  Id.  pp.  57-58  (last   ed.   pp.  74-76),  citing'  Tholuck,  Deutsche  Univer- 
sitUten,   i,    145-148,   and   Dowdin^,  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Calixtus, 

PP-  132-3- 

4  Hurst,  p.  59. 


GERMANY  255 


sample  of  good  printing  for  the  period)  declares  that 
"  there  are  men  in  this  diseased  ( exiilcerato )  age  who 
dare  to  oppose  science  to  revelation,  reason  to  faith, 
nature  to  grace,  the  creator  to  the  redeemer,  and  truth 
to  truth";  and  the  writer  undertakes  to  rise  argumen- 
tatively  from  nature  to  the  Christian  God,  without, 
however,  transcending  the  logical  plane  of  De  Mornay. 
The  trouble  of  the  time,  unhappily,  was  not  rationalism, 
but  the  inextinguishable  hatreds  of  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  and  the  strife  of  economic  interests  dating 
from  the  appropriations  of  the  first  reformers.  At 
length,  after  a  generation  of  gloomy  suspense,  came 
the  explosion  of  the  hostile  ecclesiastical  interests,  and 
the  long-drawn  horror  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  which 
left  Germany  mangled,  devastated,  drained  of  blood  and 
treasure,  decivilised,  and  well-nigh  destitute  of  the 
machinery  of  culture.  No  such  printing  as  that  of 
Alsted's  book  was  to  be  done  in  the  German  world  for 
many  generations.  But  as  in  France,  so  in  Germany, 
the  exhausting  experience  of  the  moral  and  physical 
evil  of  religious  war  wrought  something  of  an  antidote, 
in  the  shape  of  a  new  spirit  of  rationalism. 

Not  only  was  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  an  essentially 
secular  arrangement,  subordinating  all  religious  claims 
to  a  political  settlement,'  but  the  drift  of  opinion  was 
markedly  freethinking.  Already  in  1630  one  writer 
describes  "  three  classes  of  skeptics  among  the  nobility 
of  Hamburg  :  first,  those  who  believe  that  religion  is 
nothing  but  a  mere  fiction,  invented  to  keep  the  masses 
in  restraint ;  second,  those  who  give  preference  to  no 
faith,  but  think  that  all  religions  have  a  germ  of  truth  ; 
and  third,  those  who,  confessing  that  there  must  be  one 
true  religion,  are  unable  to  decide  whether  it  is  papal, 
Calvinist,  or  Lutheran,  and  consequently  believe  nothing 
at  all."-  No  less  explicit  is  the  written  testimony  of 
Walther,     the     court   chaplain     of    Ulrich    II    of    East 


'  Cp.  Buckle,  I -vol.  ed.  pp.  308-9. 

-  Quoted  by  Bishop  Hurst,  ed.  cited,  p.  60. 


2S6  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Friesland,  1637  : — "  These  infernal  courtiers,  among- 
whom  I  am  compelled  to  live  against  my  will,  doubt 
those  truths  which  even  the  heathen  have  learned  to 
believe."'  In  Germany  as  in  France  the  freethinking- 
which  thus  grew  up  during  the  religious  war  expanded 
after  the  peace.  As  usual,  this  is  to  be  gathered  from 
the  orthodox  propaganda  against  it,  setting  out  in  1662 
with  a  Preservative  against  the  Pest  of  Present-day 
Atheists^-  by  one  Theophilus  Gegenbauer.  So  far  was 
this  from  attaining  its  end  that  there  ensued  ere  long  a 
more  positive  and  aggressive  development  of  freethinking- 
than  any  other  country  had  yet  seen.  A  wandering' 
scholar,  Matthias  Knutzen  (b.  T645),  who  had  studied 
philosophy  at  Konigsberg,  went  about  teaching  a  hardy 
Religion  of  Humanity,  rejecting  alike  immortality,  God 
and  Devil,  churches  and  priests,  and  insisting  that 
conscience  could  perfectly  well  take  the  place  of  the 
Bible  as  a  guide  to  conduct.  His  doctrines  are  to  be 
gathered  chiefly  from  a  curious  Latin  letter,  written  by 
him  for  circulation,  entitled  Amicus  Aniicis  Arnica; 
and  in  this  the  profession  of  atheism  is  explicit  : 
''  Insuper  Dettm  negamits"  His  followers,  as  holding 
by  conscience,  were  called  Gezvissener ;  and  he  is 
reported  to  have  said  that  at  Jena  alone,  about  1674, 
there  were  seven  hundred  of  them.  Yet  he  and  the 
whole  movement  passed  rapidly  out  of  sight — hardly  by 
reason  of  the  orthodox  refutations,  however.  Germany 
was  in  no  state  to  sustain  such  a  party  ;  and  what 
happened  was  a  necessarily  slow  gestation  of  the  seed  of 
new  thought  thus  cast  abroad. 

Knutzen's  letter  is  given  in  full  by  a  Welsh  scholar  settled 
in  Germany,  Jenkinus  Thoniasius  (Jenkin  Thomas),  in  his 
Historia  Atheismi,  1709,  pp.  97-101.  Thomasius  thus  codifies 
its  doctrine  : — "  i.  There  is  neither  God  nor  Devil.  2.  The 
magistrate  is  nothing  to  be  esteemed  ;  temples  are  to  be  con- 
demned, priests  to  be  rejected.  3.  In  place  of  the  magistrate 
and  the  priest  are  to  be  put  knowledge  and  reason,  joined  with 

'  Quoted  by  Bishop  Hurst,  ed.  cited,  p.  60  (78). 
^  Preservatio  iinder  die  Pest  der  heutigen  Atheisten. 


GERMANY  257 


conscience,  which  teaches  to  live  honestly,  to  injure  none,  and 
to  give  each  his  own.  4.  Marriage  and  free  union  do  not  differ. 
5.  This  is  the  only  life  :  after  it,  there  is  neither  reward  nor 
punishment.  6.  The  Scripture  contradicts  itself."  Knutzen 
admittedly  wrote  like  a  scholar  {Thomasius,  p.  97).  As  to  the 
numbers  of  the  movement  see  Trinius,  Freydenker  Lexicon,  1759, 
s.v.  Knutzen.  Kurtz  {Hist,  of  the  Christian  Church,  Eng. 
trans.  1864,  i,  213)  states  that  a  careful  academic  investigation 
proved  the  claim  to  a  membership  of  700  to  be  an  empty  boast 
(citing  H.  Rossel,  Studien  und  Kritiken,  1844,  iv).  It  is  difficult 
to  attach  any  weight  to  an  academic  pronouncement  on  the 
subject,  at  a  time  when  avowal  of  membership  in  an  atheistic 
movement  meant  the  peril  of  grave  penalties,  if  not  of  death. 
"  Examples  of  total  unbelief  come  only  singly  to  knowledge," 
says  Tholuck  ;  "but  total  unbelief  had  still  to  the  end  of  the 
century  to  bear  penal  treatment."  He  gives  the  instances  (i) 
of  the  Swedish  Baron  Skytte,  reported  in  1669  by  Spener  to  the 
Frankfort  authorities  for  having  said  at  table,  before  the  court 
preacher,  that  the  Scriptures  were  not  holy,  and  not  from  God 
but  from  men  ;  and  (2)  "a  certain  minister"  who  at  the  end 
of  the  century  was  prosecuted  for  blasphemy.  {Das  kirchliche 
Leben  des  lyten  Jahrhunderts,  2  Abth.  pp.  56-57.)  Even 
anabaptists  were  still  liable  to  banishment  in  the  middle  of  the 
centur}^  Id.,  i  Abth.  1861,  p.  36.  As  to  clerical  intolerance 
see  pp.  40-44.  On  the  merits  of  the  Knutzen  movement  cp. 
Piinjer,  Hist,  of  the  Christian  Philos.  of  Religion,  Eng.  trans. 
».  437-8- 

2.  While,  however,  clerical  action  could  drive  such  a 
movement  under  the  surface,  it  could  not  prevent  the 
spread  of  rationalism  in  all  directions  ;  and  there  was 
now  germinating  a  philosophic  unbelief'  under  the 
influence  of  Spinoza.  Nowhere  were  there  more  prompt 
and  numerous  answers  to  Spinoza  than  in  Germany,"^ 
whence  it  may  be  inferred  that  within  the  educated  class 
he  soon  had  a  good  many  adherents.  In  point  of  fact 
the  Elector  Palatine  offered  him  a  professorship  of 
philosophy  at  Heidelberg  in  1673,  promising  him  "  the 
most  ample   freedom    in   philosophical    teaching,"    and 


'  Even  Knutzen  seems  to  have  been  influenced  by  Spinoza.  Punjer, 
Hist,  of  the  Christ.  Philos.  of  Religion,  Eng-.  trans,  i,  437.  Dr.  Punjer, 
however,  seems  to  have  exagg-erated  the  connection. 

^  Cp.  Lang-e,  Gesch.  des  Materialismtcs,  3te  Aufl.  i,  318  (Eng.  trans,  ii, 
35)- 

VOL.   II.  S 


258  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

merely  stipulating  that  he  should  not  use  it  "  to  disturb 
the  religion  publicly  established."'  On  the  other  hand, 
Professor  Rappolt,  of  Leipzig,  attacked  him  as  an  atheist, 
in  an  Oratio  contra  naturalistas  in  1670  ;  Professor 
Musfeus,  of  Jena,  assailed  him  in  1674  \~  and  the 
Chancellor  Kortholt,  of  Kiel,  grouped  him,  Herbert,  and 
Hobbes  as  The  Three  Great  Impostors  \x\  1680.3  After 
the  appearance  of  the  Ethica  the  replies  multiplied.  On 
the  other  hand,  Cuffelaer  vindicated  Spinoza  in  1684  ; 
and  in  1691  F.  W.  Stosch,  a  court  official,  and  son  of 
the  court  preacher,  published  a  stringent  attack  on 
revelationism,  entitled  Concordia  rationis  etjidei,  partly 
on  Spinozistic  lines,  which  created  much  commotion, 
and  was  forcibly  suppressed  and  condemned  to  be  burnt 
by  the  hangman  at  Berlin,^  as  it  denied  not  only  the 
immateriality  but  the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  the 
historical  truth  of  the  Scriptural  narratives.  This  seems 
to  have  been  the  first  work  of  modern  freethought 
published  by  a  German, s  apart  from  Knutzen's  letter  ; 
but  a  partial  list  of  the  apologetic  works  of  the  period, 
from  Gegenbauer  onwards,  may  suffice  to  suggest  the 
real  vogue  of  heterodox  opinions: — ■ 

1662.     Th.   Gegenbauer.     Preservatio  "liider  die  Pest  des  heutigen 

Atheisten.     Erfurt. 
1668.     J.     Musaius.      Examcn    Cheiinirianismi.      Contra   E.     Hei-- 

bertum  de  Cherbuiy. 
1670.      Rappolt.      Oratio  contra  Naturalistas.     Leipzig. 

1672.  J.  Miiller.     AtJieismus  devictus  {^\\\  QiQru\'a.\\).     Hamburg. 
,,         J.  Lassen.     Arcana-Pol itica-Atlieistica  (in  German). 

1673.     Besiegte  Atheisterey. 

,,        Chr.  Pfaff.   Disputatio  contra  Atheistas. 

1674.  J.  Mussus.     Spijwnismus.     Jena. 


'  Epistolce  ad  Spinosam  et  Responsio7ies,  liii. 

-  Colerus,  Vie  de  Spinoza,  in  Gfrorer's  ed.  of  the  Opera,  1830,  pp.  Iv, 
Ivi. 

3  Punjer,  as  cited,  i,  434-6  ;  Lange,  last  cit.  Lange  notes  that  Genthe's 
Compendium  de  impostura  religio7uim,  which  has  been  erroneously 
assigned  to  the  16th  century,  must  belong  to  the  period  of  Kortholt's 
work. 

"*  Punjer,  p.  439  ;  Lange,  last  cit.  ;  Tholuck,  Das  Kirclitichc  Lehen, 
2  Abth.  pp.  57-58. 

5  It  was  nominally  issued  at  Amsterdam,  really  at  Berlin. 


GERMANY 


259 


1677.     Val.  Greissing.    Corona  Transylvani :  Exerc.  2,de  Atheismo, 
contra  Cartesium  et  Math.  Knut::en.     Wittemberg. 

,,         Tobias  Wagner.   Examen atheismi specidativi.  Tubingen. 

,,         Rudrauf,  Theol.  Giessenis,  Disseitatio  dc  Atheismo. 
1680.     Chr.  Kortholt.    De  tribus  impostoribiis  viagnis  liber.    Kiloni. 
1689.     Th.   Undereyck.     Der  Ndrrische  Atheist  in  seiner  Thorheit 
ueberseugt.      Bremen. 

1696.  J.  Lassen.     Arcana-Pol itica-Atheistica.     Reprint. 

1697.  Graplus.       An  Atheismus  necessario  ducat  ad  corruptionem 

monim.      Rostock. 
,,         Em.  Weber.     Beurtheilung der  Atheisterei. 
1700.     Tribbechov.     Historia  Naturalismi.     Jena. 

1708.  Loescher.     Prceiiotiones  Theologicce  contra  Natural istarum  et 

Fanaticorum  omne genus,  Atheos,  Deistas,  Indifferentistas, 

etc.     Wittemberg. 
,,         Schwartz.     Demonstratio7ies  Dei.     Leipzig. 
,,         Rechenberg.      Fundamenta     verce.     religionis     Prudentum, 

adversiis  A  theos,  etc. 

1709.  Jenkinus  Thomasius.     Historia  Atheismi.     Basel, 

1710.  J.    C.    Wolfius.      Dissertatio    de    Atheismi    falsa    suspectis. 

Wittemberg. 
171 3.     J.  N.  Fromman.     Athens  Stultus.     Tubingen. 
,,         Anon.       Widerlegiing  der  Atheisten,    Deisten,    luid    neiten 
Zweifeler.     Frankfort. 

[Later  came  the  works  of  Buddeus  (1716)  and    Reimmann 
and  Fabricius,  noted  above,  vol.  i,  ch.  i,  ^  2.] 

3.  For  a  community  in  which  the  reading  class  was 
mainly  clerical  and  scholastic,  the  seeds  of  rationalism 
were  thus  in  part  sown  in  the  seventeenth  century  ;  but 
the  ground  was  not  yet  propitious.  Leibnitz  (1646-17 16), 
the  chief  thinker  produced  by  Germany  before  Kant, 
lived  in  a  state  of  singular  intellectual  isolation  ;'  and 
showed  his  sense  of  it  by  writing  his  philosophic 
treatises  chiefly  in  French.  Ox\q  of  the  most  widely 
learned  men  of  his  age,  he  was  wont  from  his  boyhood 
to  grapple  critically  with  every  system  of  thought  that 
came  in  his  way  ;  and,  while  claiming  to  be  always  eager 
to  learn,-  he  was  as  a  rule  strongly  concerned  to  affirm 
his  own  powerful  bias.  Early  in  life  he  writes  that  it 
horrifies   him  to  think  how  many  men  he  has  met  who 

'  Cp.  Buckle  and  his  Critics,  pp.  171-2  ;   Piinjer,  i,  515. 
"  Letter  cited  by  Dr.  Latta,  Leibniz,  1898,  p.  2,  note. 


26o  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

were  at  once  intelligent  and  atheistic  ;'  and  his  propa- 
ganda is  always  dominated  by  the  desire  rather  to 
confute  unbelief  than  to  find  out  the  truth.  As  early  as 
1668  (aet.  22)  he  wrote  an  essay  to  that  end,  which  was 
published  as  a  Cotifessio  naturce  contra  Atheistas. 
Against  Spinoza  he  reacted  instantly  and  violently, 
pronouncing  the  Tractatus  on  its  first  (anonymous) 
appearance  an  "  unbearably  bold  {licentiosuni)  book," 
and  resenting  the  Hobbesian  criticism  which  it  "  dared 
to  apply  to  sacred  Scripture."^  Yet  in  the  next  year  we 
find  him  writing  to  Arnauld  in  earnest  protest  against 
the  hidebound  orthodoxy  of  the  Church.  "  A  philo- 
sophic age,"  he  declares,  "is  about  to  begin,  in  which 
the  concern  for  truth,  flourishing  outside  the  schools, 
will  spread  even  among  politicians.  Nothing  is  more 
likely  to  strengthen  atheism  and  to  upset  faith,  already 
so  shaken  by  the  attacks  of  great  but  bad  men  [a  pleasing 
allusion  to  Spinoza],  than  to  see  on  the  one  side  the 
mysteries  of  the  faith  preached  upon  as  the  creed  of 
all,  and  on  the  other  hand  become  matter  of  derision  to 
all,  convicted  of  absurdity  by  the  most  certain  rules  of 
common  reason.  The  worst  enemies  of  the  church  are 
in  the  church.  Let  us  take  care  lest  the  latest  heresy 
— I  will  not  say  atheism,  but — naturalism,  be  publicly 
professed."^  For  a  time  he  seemed  thus  disposed  to 
liberalise.  He  wrote  to  Spinoza  on  points  of  optics 
before  he  discovered  the  authorship  ;  and  he  is  repre- 
sented later  as  speaking  of  the  Tractatus  with  respect. 
He  even  called  on  Spinoza  in  1676,  and  obtained  a 
perusal  of  the  manuscript  of  the  ^Mz'c^/  but  he  remained 
hostile  to  him  in  theology  and  philosophy.  To  the  last 
he  called  Spinoza  a  mere  developer  of  Descartes, ^  whom 
he  also  resisted.     This  was  not  hopeful  ;  and  Leibnitz, 

'  Philosophise]! e  Schriften,  ed.  Gerhardt,  i,  26  ;  trans,  in  Martineau's 
Study  of  Spinoza,  p.  77. 

^  Letter  to  Thomas,  December  23rd,  1670. 

3  Quoted  by  Tholuck,  as  last  cited,  p.  61.  Spener  took  the  same 
tone. 

"*  Latta,  p.  24;  Martineau,  Study  of  Spinosa,  p.  75;  Philos.  Schriften 
von  Leibniz,  ed.  Gerhardt,  i,  34  ;  ii,  563.  Cp.  Refutation  of  Spinoza  by 
Leibnitz,  ed.  by  Foucher  de  Careil,  Eng.  trans.  1855. 


GERMANY  261 


with  all  his  power  and  originality,  really  wrought  little 
for  the  direct  rationalisation  of  religious  thought.'  His 
philosophy,  with  all  its  ingenuity,  has  the  common 
stamp  of  the  determination  of  the  theist  to  find  reasons 
for  the  God  in  whom  he  believed  beforehand  ;  and  his 
principle  that  all  is  for  the  best  is  the  fatal  rounding  of 
his  argumentative  circle.  Nominally  he  adhered  to  the 
entire  Christian  system,  though  he  declared  that  his 
belief  in  dogma  rested  on  the  agreement  of  reason  with 
faith,  and  claimed  to  keep  his  thought  free  on  unassailed 
truths  ;-  and  he  always  discussed  the  Bible  as  a  believer; 
yet  he  rarely  went  to  church  y  and  the  Low  German  nick- 
name Lovenix  {=^  Glaubet  nichtSy  "believes  nothing") 
expressed  his  local  reputation.  No  clergyman  attended 
his  funeral  ;  but  indeed  no  one  else  went,  save  his 
secretary.-* 

4.  It  is  on  the  whole  difficult  to  doubt  that  his  indirect 
influence  not  only  in  Germany  but  elsewhere  had  been 
for  deism  and  atheism. ^  He  and  Newton  were  the 
most  distinguished  mathematicians  and  theists  of  the 
age  ;  and  Leibnitz,  as  we  saw,  busied  himself  to  show 
that  the  philosophy  of  Newton*"  tended  to  atheism,  and 
that  that  of  their  theistic  predecessor  Descartes  would 
not  stand  criticism. ^  Spinoza  being,  according  to  him, 
in  still  worse  case,  and  Locke  hardly  any  sounder,^  there 
remains  for  theists  only  his  cosmology  of  monads  and 
his  ethic  of  optimism— all  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all 
possible  worlds — which  seems  at  least  as  well  fitted  as 

'  His  notable  surmise  as  to  gradation  of  species  (see  Latta,  pp.  38-39) 
was  taken  up  among  the  French  materiaHsts,  but  did  not  then  modify 
current  science. 

^  Cp.  Tholuck,  Das  kirchliche  Leben,  as  cited,  2  Abth.  1862,  pp.  52-55. 

3  Cp.  Piinjer,  i,  509,  as  to  his  attitude  on  ritual. 

"*  Latta,  as  cited,  p.  16  ;  Vie  de  Leibnitz,  par  De  Jaucourt,  in  ed.  1747 
of  the  Essais  de  Thdodicde.,  i,  235-9. 

5  As  to  his  virtual  deism,  see  Piinjer,  i,  513-5-  But  he  proposed  to 
send  Christian  missionaries  to  the  heathen.     Tholuck,  p.  55. 

*  Lettres  entre  Leibnitz  et  Clarke. 

7  Discours  de  la  conformity  de  la  foi  avecla  raison,  §§  68-70  ;  Essais  sur 
la  bontd  de  Dieu,  etc.,  §§  50,  61,  164,  180,  292-3. 

®  The  Nouveanx  Essais  sur  I'Entendetnent  Inanain,  refuting-  Locke, 
appeared  posthumously  in  1765.  Locke  in  his  turn  had  treated  his 
theistic  critic  with  contempt.     (Latta,  p.  13.) 


262  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

any  other  theism  to  make  thoughtful   men   give  up  the 
principle.     Other  culture-conditions  concurred  to  set  up 
a  spirit  of  rationalism  in  Germany.     After  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  there  arose  a  religious  movement,   called 
Pietism  by  its  theological  opponents,  which  aimed  at  an 
emotional   inwardness  of  religious  life  as  against  what 
its  adherents  held  to  be  an  irreligious  orthodoxy  around 
them.'     Though  its  first  leaders   grew  embittered  with 
their  unsuccess  and  the  attacks  of  their  religious  enemies,^ 
their  impulse  went  far,  and  greatly  influenced  the  clergy 
through  the  university  of  Halle,  which  turned  out  6,000 
clergymen    in    one   generation. ^     Against    the    Pietists 
were  furiously  arrayed  the   Lutherans  of  the  old  order, 
who  even   contrived    in  many  places  to  suppress  their 
schools.-*     Religion  was  thus  represented  by  a  species  of 
extremely  unattractive  and   frequently  absurd  formalists 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  by  a  school  tending 
alternately  to  fanaticism  and  cant.^     Thus  "the  rationalist 
tendencies    of    the  age   were    promoted    by   this    treble 
exhibition  of  the  aberrations  of  belief."^     "  How  sorely," 
says  Tholuck,  "the  hold  not  only  of  ecclesiastical  but  of 
Biblical  belief  on  men  of  all  grades  had  been  shaken  at 
the    beginning   of    the    eighteenth    century  is   seen    in 
many  instances."^     Orthodoxy  selects  that  of  a  Holstein 
student  who   hanged  himself   at  Wittemberg   in    1688, 
leaving  written   in   his  New  Testament,   in    Latin,    the 
declaration    that    "  Our   soul  is    mortal  ;    religion    is    a 
popular  delusion,  invented  to  gull   the  ignorant  and  so 
govern  the  world  the  better."^     But  again  there  is  the 
testimony  of  the  mint-master  at   Hanover  that  at  court 


'  Amand  Saintes,  Hist.  crit.  du  Rationnlismc  en  AUemagne,  1841, 
ch.  vi. 

-  Hagfenbach,  German  Rationalism,  Eng.  trans.  1865,  p.  9. 

3  Id.  p.  39  ;  Pusey,  Historical  Enquiry  into  the  Causes  of  German 
Rationalism,   1828,  pp.  88,  97. 

■*  Pusey,  pp.  86,  87,  98. 

s  Cp.  Pusey,  pp.  37-38,  45,  48,  49,  53-4,  79,  101-9;  Saintes,  pp.  28, 
79-80;   Hagenbach,  pp.  41,  72,  105. 

*  Pusey,  p.  no.     Cp.  Saintes,  ch.  vi. 

7  Das  kirchliche  Leben,  as  cited,  2  Abth.  p.  58. 

8  Id.  pp.  56-57. 


GERMANY  263 


there  all  lived  as  "free  atheists."  And  though  the 
name  "  freethinker  "  was  not  yet  much  used  in  discussion, 
it  had  become  current  in  the  form  of  Freigeist"^ — the 
German  equivalent  still  used.  This  was  probably  a 
survival  from  the  name  of  the  old  sect  of  the  "  Free 
Spirit,"  rather  than  an  adaptation  from  the  French  esprit 
fort  or  the  English  "  freethinker." 

5.  After  the  collapse  of  the  popular  movement  of 
Matthias  Knutzen,  the  thin  end  of  the  new  wedge  may 
be  seen  in  the  manifold  work  of  Christian  Thomasius 
(1655-1728),  who  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  published  a 
treatise  on  "  Divine  Jurisprudence,"  in  which  the 
principles  of  Puffendorf  on  natural  law  were  carried  so 
far  as  to  give  much  offence.  Innovating  in  all  things, 
he  began,  while  still  a  Privatdocent  at  Leipzig  University, 
a  campaign  on  behalf  of  the  German  language  ;  and, 
not  content  with  arousing  much  pedantic  enmity  by 
delivering  lectures  for  the  first  time  in  his  mother  tongue, 
and  deriding  at  the  same  time  the  bad  scholastic  Latin  of 
his  compatriots,  he  set  on  foot  the  first  German  periodical,^ 
which  ran  for  two  years  (1688-90),  and  caused  so  much 
anger  that  he  was  twice  prosecuted  before  the  ecclesiastical 
court  of  Dresden,  the  second  time  on  a  charge  of 
contempt  of  religion.  Other  satirical  writings,  and  a 
defence  of  intermarriage  between  Calvinists  and 
Lutherans, 3  at  length  put  him  in  such  danger  that,  to 
escape  imprisonment,  he  sought  the  protection  of  the 
Elector  of  Brandenburg  at  Halle,  where  he  ultimately 
became  professor  of  jurisprudence  in  the  new  university, 
founded  by  his  advice.  In  philosophy  an  unsystematic 
pantheist,  he  taught,  after  Plutarch,  Bayle,  and  Bacon, 
that  "  superstition  is  worse  than  atheism  " ;  but  his  great 
practical  service  to  German  civilisation,  over  and  above 

'  ^.^.,  the  reference  to  "  Alten  Quacker  und  neuen  Frey-Geister "  in 
the  title-pag-e  of  the  folio  Anabaptisticum  et  Enthusiasticum  Pantheon, 
1702. 

=  FreimiUhige,  lustige  und  enisthaflc,  jedocli  vernunft-  vnd  gesets- 
mcissige  Gedanken,  oder  Monatgesprdche  ilher  allerhand,  vornehmlich 
liber  neue  Biicher. 

3  Pusey,  p.  86,  note. 


264  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

his  furthering  of  the  native  speech,  was  his  vigorous 
polemic  against  prosecutions  for  heresy,  trials  for  witch- 
craft, and  the  use  of  torture,  all  of  which  he  did  more 
than  any  other  German  to  discredit,  though  judicial 
torture  subsisted  for  another  half-century/  In  such  a 
battle  he  of  course  had  the  clergy  against  him  all  along 
the  line  ;  and  it  is  as  an  anti-clerical  that  he  figures  in 
clerical  history.  The  perturbed  Mosheim  pronounces 
that  the  "famous  jurists"  who  were  led  by  Thomasius 
"  set  up  a  new  fundamental  principle  of  church  polity — 
namely,  the  supreme  authority  and  power  of  the  civil 
magistrate,"  so  tending  to  create  the  opinion  "that  the 
ministers  of  religion  are  not  to  be  accounted  ambas- 
sadors of  God,  but  vicegerents  of  the  chief  magistrates. 
They  also  weakened  not  a  little  the  few  remaining 
prerogatives  and  advantages  which  were  left  of  the  vast 
number  formerly  possessed  by  the  clergy  ;  and  main- 
tained that  many  of  the  maxims  and  regulations  of  our 
churches  which  had  come  down  from  our  fathers  were 
relics  of  popish  superstition.  This  afforded  matter  for 
long   and    pernicious  feuds   and    contests   between    our 

theologians  and  our  jurists It  will   be  sufficient  for 

us  to  observe,  what  is  abundantly  attested,  that  they 
diminished  much  in  various  places  the  respect  for  the 
clergy,  the  reverence  for  religion,  and  the  security  and 
prosperity  of  the  Lutheran  Church."^ 

6.  A  personality  of  a  very  different  kind  emerges  in 
the  same  period  in  Johann  Conrad  Dippel  (1673-1734), 
who  developed  a  system  of  rationalistic  mysticism,  and 
as  to  whom,  says  an  orthodox  historian,  "  one  is  doubt- 
ful whether  to  place  him  in  the  class  of  pietists  or  of 
rationalists,  of  enthusiasts  or  of  scoffers,  of  mystics  or  of 


'  Compare  Weber,  Geschichte  der  deufscheii  Liferafur,  §  8i  (ed.  1880, 
pp.  90-91);  Enfield's  History  of  Philosophy  (an  abstract  of  Brucker's 
Historia  critica philosophice),  1840,  pp.  610-612;  Ueberweg-,  ii,  115;  and 
Schleg-el's  note  in  Reid's  Mosheim,  p.  790,  with  Karl  Hillebrand,  Six 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  GerJiiayi  Thought,  1880,  pp.  64-65.  There  is 
a  modern  monograph  by  A.  Nicoladoni,  Christian  Thomasius ;  ein 
Beitrag  zur  Geschichte  der  At(fkldru>ig,  1888. 

=  Ec.  Hist.  17  Cent.  Sect,  ii,  Pt.  ii,  ch.  i,  §  14. 


GERMANY  265 


freethinkers."'  The  son  of  a  preacher,  he  yet  "exhibited 
in  his  ninth  year  strong  doubts  as  to  the  catechism." 
After  a  tolerably  free  life  as  a  student  he  turned  Pietist 
at  Strasburg,  lectured  on  astrology  and  palmistry, 
preached,  and  got  into  trouble  with  the  police.  In  i6g8 
he  published  under  the  pen-name  of  "  Christianus 
Democritus"  his  book,  Gestciiiptes  Papstthiim  der  Protes- 
tirenden  ("The  Popery  of  the  Protestantisers  Whipped  "), 
in  which  he  so  attacked  the  current  Christian  ethic  of 
salvation  as  to  exasperate  both  churches.''  The  stress  of 
his  criticism  fell  firstly  on  the  unthinking  Scripturalism 
of  the  average  Protestant,  who,  he  said,  while  reproach- 
ing the  Catholic  with  setting  up  in  the  crucifix  a  God  of 
wood,  was  apt  to  make  for  himself  a  God  of  paper.^  In 
his  repudiation  of  the  "bargain"  or  "redemption" 
doctrine  of  the  historic  church  he  took  up  positions 
which  were  one  day  to  become  respectable  ;  but  in  his 
own  life  he  was  much  of  an  Ishmaelite,  with  wild  notions 
of  alchemy  and  gold-making  ;  and  after  predicting  that 
he  should  live  till  1808,  he  died  suddenly  in  1734,  leaving 
a  doctrine  which  appealed  only  to  those  constitutionally 
inclined,  on  the  lines  of  the  earlier  English  Quakers,  to 
set  the  inner  light  above  Scripture.-* 

7.  Among  the  pupils  of  Thomasius  at  Halle  was 
Theodore  Louis  Lau,  who,  born  of  an  aristocratic 
family,  became  Minister  of  Finances  to  the  Duke  of 
Courland,  and  after  leaving  that  post  held  a  high  place 
in  the  service  of  the  Elector  Palatine.  While  holding 
that  office  Lau  published  a  small  Latin  volume  of 
pensees  entitled  Meditationes  TheologiccB-Physicce,  notably 
deistic  in  tone.  This  gave  rise  to  such  an  outcry  among 
the  clergy  that  he  had  to  leave  Frankfort,  only,  however, 
to  be  summoned  before  the  consistory  of  Konigsberg, 

'  Hag-enbach,  Kirchengeschichte  des  18.  nnd  ig.  Jahrh.  2te  Aufl.  i,  164. 
(This  matter  is  not  in  the  abridg-ed  translation.) 

^  See  the  furious  account  of  him  by  Mosheim,  17  Cent.  sec.  ii,  Pt. 
ii,  ch.  i,  §  2,2,- 

3  Id.  p.  169. 

■*  Noack,  Die  Freidenker  in  der  Religion,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  i;  Bruno  Bauer, 
Einfluss  des  englischen  Oudkerthunis  auf  die  deutsche  Cultur  und  auf  das 
englisch-russische  Projekt  einer  Weltkirche,  1878,  pp.  41-44. 


266  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


his  native  town,  and  charged  with  atheism  (17 19).  He 
thereupon  retired  to  Altona,  where  he  had  freedom 
enough  to  pubHsh  a  reply  to  his  clerical   persecutors.' 

8.  While  Thomasius  was  still  at  work,  a  new  force 
arose  of  a  more  distinctly  academic  cast.  This  was  the 
adaptation  of  the  Leibnitzian  system  made  by  Wolff, 
who  first  came  into  prominence  by  a  rectorial  address  at 
Halle  (1722)  in  which  he  warmly  praised  the  ethics  of 
Confucius.  Such  praise  was  naturally  held  to  imply 
disparagement  of  Christianity  ;  and  as  a  result  of  the 
pietist  outcry  Wolff  was  condemned  by  the  king  to  exile 
from  Prussia,  under  penalty  of  death, ""  all  "atheistical" 
writings  being  at  the  same  time  forbidden.  Wolff's 
system,  however,  prevailed,  though  he  refused  to  return 
on  any  invitation  till  the  accession  (1740)  of  Frederick 
the  Great ;  and  his  teaching,  which  for  the  first  time 
popularised  philosophy  in  the  German  language,  in  turn 
helped  to  promote  the  rationalistic  temper,-"^  though 
orthodox  enough  from  the  modern  point  of  view. 
Under  the  new  reign,  however,  pietism  and  Wolffism 
alike  lost  prestige, •♦  and  the  age  of  anti-Christian  and 
Christian  rationalism  began. 

9.  Even  before  the  generation  of  active  pressure  from 
English  and  French  deism  there  were  clear  signs  that 
rationalism  had  taken  root  in  German  life.  In  the 
so-called  Wertheim  Bible  (1735)  Johann  Lorenz 
Schmidt,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Leibnitz- Wolffian  theology, 
"  undertook  to  translate  the  Bible,  and  to  explain  it 
according  to  the  principle  that  in  revelation  only  that 
can  be  accepted  as  true  which  does  not  contradict  the 
reason."^  To  the  same  period  belong  the  first  activities 
of  Johann  Christian  Edelmann  (1698-1767),  one  of 
the  most  energetic  freethinkers  of  his  age.  Trained 
philosophically  at  Jena  under  the  theologian  Budde,  a 

'  Pref.  to  French  trans,  of  the  Meditationes,  1770,  pp.  xii-xvii.  Lau 
died  in  1740. 

-   Hagenbach,  trans,  pp.  35-36  ;  Saintes,  p.  61. 

3  Cairns,  Unbelief  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  1881,  p.  173  ;  Pusey  pp. 
115-119;   PiJnjer,  p.  529;  Lechler,  pp.  448-9. 

•t  Hagenbach,  pp.  37-39.  s  PUnjer,  i,  544. 


GERMANY  267 


bitter  opponent  of  Wolff,  and  theologically  in  the  school 
of  the  Pietists,  he  was  strongly  influenced  against  official 
orthodoxy  through  reading  the  "Impartial   History  of 
the  Church   and    of   Heretics,"  by  Godfrey  Arnold,  an 
eminently  anti-clerical  work,  which  nearly  always  takes 
the  side  of  the  heretics.'     In  the  same  heterodox  direction 
he  was  swayed  by  the  works  of  Dippel,     At  this  stage 
Edelmann     produced       his      Unschuldige     Wahrheiten 
("Innocent    Truths"),    in    which    he    takes    up   a   pro- 
nouncedly   rationalist   and    latitudinarian    position,    but 
without  rejecting  "revelation";    and   in    1736  he  went 
to  Berleburg,  where  he  worked  on  the  Berleburg  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible,  a  Pietist  undertaking,  somewhat  on 
the  lines  of  Dippel's  mystical  doctrine,  in  which  a  variety 
of  incredible  Scriptural   narratives,  from   the   six  days* 
creation  onwards,  are  turned  to  mystical  purpose.-     In 
this  occupation  Edelmann   seems  to  have  passed  some 
years.     Gradually,  however,  he   came    more   and  more 
under  the  influence  of  the   English  deists  ;    and  he  at 
length   withdrew  from   the   Pietist  camp,  attacking  his 
former   associates  for  the   fanaticism    into    which    their 
thought  was  degenerating.      It  was  under  the  influence 
of  Spinoza,  however,  that  he  took  his  most  important 
steps.     A  few  months  after  meeting  with  the  Tractatus 
he  began  (1740)  the  first  part  of  his  treatise  Moses  mit 
aufgedecktem  Angesichte  ("  Moses  with  unveiled  face"), 
an  attack  at  once  on  the  doctrine  of  inspiration  and  on 
that  of  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the  Pentateuch.     The 
book  was  intended  to  consist  of  twelve  parts  ;  but  after 
the  appearance  of  three  it  was  prohibited  by  the  imperial 
fisc,  and  the  published  parts  burned  by  the  hangman  at 

'  Unpartheyisclie  Kirchen-  unci  KetzerhistoriL\  1699-1700,  2  torn.  fol. — 
fuller  ed.  3  torn.  fol.  1740.  Compare  Mosheim's  angry  account  of  it 
with  Murdock's  note  in  defence  :  Reid's  ed.  p.  804.  Bruno  Bauer 
describes  it  as  epoch-making-  {Einfiuss  des  englischen  Oiicikerthums, 
p.  42).  This  history  had  a  g^reat  influence  on  Goethe  in  his  teens, 
leading  him,  he  says,  to  the  conviction  that  he  like  so  many  other  men 
should  have  a  religion  of  his  own,  which  he  goes  on  to  describe.  It 
was  a  re-hash  of  Gnosticism.  (  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  B.  viii :  Werke, 
ed.  1866,  xi,  344  sq.) 

-  Cp.  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  171  ;   Piinjer,  i,  279. 


268  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Hamburg  and  elsewhere.  Nonetheless,  Edelmann  con- 
tinued his  propaganda,  publishing  in  1741  or  1742  Die 
Gottlichkeit  der  Vernnnft  ("  The  Divinity  of  Reason  "), 
and  in  1741  Christ  and  Belial.  In  1749  or  1750  his  works 
were  again  publicly  burned  at  Frankfurt  by  order  of  the 
imperial  authorities  ;  and  he  had  much  ado  to  find  any- 
where in  Germany  safe  harbourage,  till  he  found  protec- 
tion under  Frederick  at  Berlin,  where  he  died  in  1767. 

Edelmann's  teaching  was  essentially  Spinozist  and 
pantheistic,'  with  a  leaning  to  the  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis. As  a  pantheist  he  of  course  entirely 
rejected  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  pronouncing  inspiration 
the  appanage  of  all  ;  and  the  Gospels  were  by  him 
dismissed  as  late  fabrications,  from  which  the  true 
teachings  of  the  founder  could  not  be  learned  ;  though, 
like  all  the  freethinkers  of  that  age,  he  estimated  Jesus 
highly.  A  German  theologian  complains,  nevertheless, 
that  he  was  "  more  just  toward  heathenism  than  toward 
Judaism  ;  and  more  just  toward  Judaism  than  toward 
Christianity";  adding:  "What  he  taught  had  been 
thoroughly  and  ingeniously  said  in  France  and 
England  ;  but  from  a  German  theologian,  and  that 
with  such  eloquent  coarseness,  such  mastery  in 
expatiating  in  blasphemy,  such  things  were  unheard 
of."^ 

Even  from  decorous  and  official  exponents  of  religion, 
however,  there  came  "  naturalistic "  and  semi-ration- 
alistic teaching,  as  in  the  Reflections  on  the  most 
important  truths  of  religion^'  (1744)  of  J.  F.  W. 
Jerusalem,  Abbot  of  Marienthal  in  Brunswick,  and  later 
of  Riddagshausen  (i 709-1 789).     Though  really  written 


'  Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  2  ;  Saintes,  pp.  85-86  ;   Piinjer,  p.  442. 

'  Kahnis,  cited  by  Bishop  Hurst,  Hist,  of  Rationalism,  e.6..  1867,  p.  118; 
ed.  1901,  pp.  138-9.  A  collection  of  extracts  from  Edelmann's  works, 
entitled  Der  neii  eriiffnete  Edelmann,  was  published  at  Bern  in  1847  ; 
and  the  Unschiddige  Wahrheiten  was  reprinted  in  1846.  His  Auto- 
biography, written  in  1752,  was  published  in  1849. 

3  Betrachtungen  iiber  die  vornehmsien  Wahrlieiten  der  Religion. 
Another  apologetic  work  of  the  period  marked  by  rational  moderation 
and  tolerance  was  the  Vertheidigten  Glauben  der  Christen  of  A.  W.  F. 
Sack  (1754). 


GERMANY  269 


by  way  of  defending  Christianity  against  the  free- 
thinkers, in  particular  against  Bolingbroke  and  Voltaire/ 
the  very  title  of  the  book  is  suggestive  of  a  process  of 
disintegration  ;  and  in  it  certain  unedifying  Scriptural 
miracles  are  actually  rejected.-  It  was  probably  this 
measure  of  adaptation  to  new  needs  that  gave  it  its  great 
popularity  in  Germany,  and  secured  its  translation  into 
several  other  languages.  Jerusalem  was,  however,  at 
most  a  semi-rationalist,  taking  a  view  of  the  fundamental 
Christian  dogmas  which  approached  closely  to  that  of 
Locke. 3  It  was,  as  Goethe  said  later,  the  epoch  of 
common  sense  ;  and  the  very  theologians  tended  to  a 
"  religion  of  nature.  ""* 

10.  Alongside  of  home-made  heresy  there  had  come 
into  play  a  new  initiative  force  in  the  literature  of  English 
deism,  which  began  to  be  translated  after  1740,^  and  was 
widely  circulated  till,  in  the  last  third  of  the  century,  it 
was  superseded  by  the  French.  The  English  answers 
to  the  deists  were  frequently  translated  likewise,  and 
notoriously  helped  to  promote  deism ^ — another  proof 
that  it  was  not  their  influence  that  had  changed  the 
balance  of  activity  in  England.  Under  a  freethinking 
king,  even  clergymen  began  guardedly  to  accept  the 
deistic  methods  ;  and  the  optimism  of  Shaftesbury 
began  to  overlay  the  optimism  of  Leibnitz  ;7  while  a 
French  scientific  influence  began  with  La  Mettrie,^ 
Maupertuis,  and  Robinet.  Even  the  Leibnitzian  school, 
proceeding    on    the    principle    of     immortal    monads, 

'  Hagfenbach,  KirchengeschicJite,  i,  355. 

-  Piinjer,  i,  542. 

3  Cp.  Hagenbach,  i,  353  ;  trans,  p.  120.  Jerusalem  was  the  father  of 
the  youth  whose  fate  moved  Goethe  to  write  The  Sorrows  of  Werther. 
He  had  considerable  influence  in  purifying  German  style.  Cp.  Goethe, 
Wahrheit  und  Dichtung,  Th.  II,  B.  vii  ;    Werke,  ed.  1866,  xi,  272. 

*  Id.  pp.  268-9. 

5  Lechler,  Gesch.  des  englischen  Deism  us,  pp.  447-452.  The  transla- 
tions began  with  that  of  Tindal  (1741),  which  made  a  great  sensation. 

^  Pusey,  pp.  125,  127,  citing  Twesten  ;  Gostwick,  German  Culture  and 
Christianity,  p.  36,  citing  Ernesti.  Thorschmid's  Freidenker  Bihliothek, 
issued  in  1765-67,  collected  both  translations  and  refutations.  Lechler, 
p.  451. 

7  Lange,  Gesch.  des  Mater ialismus,  i,  405  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  146-7). 

8  Lange,  i,  347,  399  (Eng.  trans,  ii,  76,  137). 


2-jo  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

developed  a  doctrine  of  the  immortality  of  the  souls  of 
animals' — a  position  not  helpful  to  orthodoxy.  There 
was  thus  a  general  stirring  of  doubt  among  educated 
people, ""  and  we  find  mention  in  Goethe's  Autobiography 
of  an  old  gentleman  of  Frankfort  who  avowed,  as 
against  the  optimists,  "  Even  in  God  I  find  defects 
{Fehlery^ 

On  the  other  hand,  there  were   instances  in  Germany 
of  the  phenomenon,  already  seen  in  England  in  Newton 
and  Boyle,  of  men  of  science  devoting  themselves  to  the 
defence  of  the  faith.     The  most  notable  cases  were  those 
of    the    mathematician     Euler    and    the    biologist   von 
Haller.     The  latter  wrote  Letters  (to  his  Daughter)  On 
the  Truth  of  the   Christian  Religion   (1772)'*  and    other 
apologetic  works.     Euler  in    1747  published  at  Berlin, 
where    he   was    professor,    his    Defence   of  Revelation 
against  the  Reproaches  of  Freethinkers ;^  and   in    1769 
his  Letters  to  a   German  Princess,  of  which  the  argu- 
ment notably  coincides  with   part  of  that  of   Berkeley 
against  the  freethinking  mathematicians.     Haller's  posi- 
tion comes  to  the  same  thing.     All  three  men,  in  fact, 
grasped  at   the    argument  of  despair — the    inadequacy 
of  the  human  faculties  to  sound  the  mystery  of  things  ; 
and     all     alike    were    entirely    unable    to    see    that     it 
logically    cancelled     their    own    judgments.      Even    a 
theologian,   contemplating   Haller's  theorem    of  an   in- 
comprehensible omnipotence  countered   in  its  merciful 
plan  of  salvation  by  the  set  of  worms  it  sought  to  save, 
comments  on  the  childishness  of  the  philosophy  which 
confidently  described  the  plans  of  deity  in  terms  of  what 
it  declared  to  be  the  blank  ignorance  of  the  worms  in 
question. *"     Euler  and  von  Haller,  like  some  later  men  of 

'  Lange,  i,  396-7  (ii,  134-5). 

^  Goethe  tells  of  having  seen  in  his  boyhood,  at  Frankfurt,  an  irre- 
ligious French  romance  publicly  burned,  and  of  having  his  interest  in 
the  book  thereby  awakened.  But  this  seems  to  have  been  during  the 
French  occupation.     {Wahrheii  und  Dichtiing,  B.  iv  ;    Werke,  xi,  146.) 

3  Id.  B.  iv,  end. 

*  Translated  into  English  as  Letters  against  the  Freethinkers. 

5  Rettung  der  Offenbarung gegen  die  EinwUrfe  der  Freigeister. 

^  Baur,  Gesch.  der  christl.  Kirche,  iv,  599. 


GERMANY  271 


science,  kept  their  scientific  method  for  the  mechanical  or 
physical  problems  of  their  scientific  work,  and  brought 
to  the  deepest  problems  of  all  the  self-will,  the 
emotionalism,  and  the  irresponsibility  of  the  ignorant 
average  man.  Each  did  but  express  in  his  own  way 
the  resentment  of  the  undisciplined  mind  at  attacks  upon 
its  prejudices  ;  and  Haller's  resort  to  poetry  as  a  vehicle 
for  his  religion  gives  the  measure  of  his  powers  on  that 
side.  Thus  in  Germany  as  in  England  the  "  answer  " 
to  the  freethinkers  was  a  failure.  Men  of  science  play- 
ing at  theology  and  theologians  playing  at  science  alike 
failed  to  turn  the  tide  of  opinion,  now  socially  favoured 
by  the  known  deism  of  the  king.  German  orthodoxy, 
says  a  recent  Christian  apologist,  fell  "  with  a  rapidity 
reminding  one  of  the  capture  of  Jericho."'  Goethe, 
writing  of  the  general  attitude  to  Christianity  about 
1768,  sums  up  that  "the  Christian  religion  wavered 
between  its  own  historic-positive  base  and  a  pure  deism, 
which,  grounded  on  morality,  was  in  turn  to  re-establish 
ethics. "= 

Frederick's  attitude,  said  an  early  Kantian,  had  had  "an 
ahnost  magical  influence "  on  popular  opinion  (Willich, 
Elements  of  the  Critical  Philosophy,  1798,  p.  2).  With  this  his 
French  teachers  must  have  had  much  to  do.  Mr.  Morley 
pronounces  (^Voltaire,  4th  ed.  p.  123)  that  French  deism  "  never 
made  any  impression  on  Germany,"  and  that  "  the  teaching  of 
Leibnitz  and  Wolff"  stood  like  a  fortified  wall  against  the  French 
invasion."  This  is  contradicted  by  much  German  testimony  ; 
in  particular  by  Lange's  (Gesch.  des  Mater,  i,  318),  though  he 
notes  that  French  materialism  could  not  get  the  upper  hand. 
Baur,  even  in  speaking  disparagingly  of  the  French  as  com- 
pared with  the  English  influence,  admits  {Lehi-biich  der 
Dogmengeschichte ,  2te  Aufl.  p.  347)  that  the  former  told  upon 
Germany.  Cp.  Tennemann,  Bohn.  trans,  pp.  385,  38S. 
Hagenhach  shows  great  ignorance  of  English  deism,  but  he 
must  have  known  something  of  German  ;  and  he  writes  (trans, 
p.  57)  that  "  the  imported  deism  soon  swept  through  the  rifts 
of  the  church  and  gained  supreme  control  of  literature."  Cp. 
pp.  67-8.  And  see  Professor  Croom  Robertson's  Hohhes, 
pp.  225-6,  as  to  the  persistence  of  a  succession  of  Hobbes  and 

'  Gostwick,  p.  15. 

-    Wahrheit  iind  Dichtung,  B.  viii :    Werke,  xi,  329. 


272  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Locke  in  Germany  in  the  teeth  of  the  Wolffian  school.  It  is 
further  noteworthy  that  Brucker's  copious  Historia  Critica 
Philosophies  (1742-44),  which  as  a  mere  learned  record  has 
great  merit,  and  was  long-  the  standard  authority  in  Germany, 
gives  great  praise  to  Locke  and  little  space  to  Wolff.  (See 
Enfield's  abstract,  pp.  614,  619  sq.)  The  Wolffian  philosophy, 
too,  had  been  rejected  and  disparaged  by  both  Herder  and 
Kant — who  were  alike  deeply  influenced  by  Rousseau — in  the 
third  quarter  of  the  century  ;  and  was  generally  discredited, 
save  in  the  schools,  when  Kant  produced  the  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason.     See  below,  pp.  293,  302. 

II.  Frederick,  though  a  Voltairean  freethinker  from 
his  youth,  showed  himself  at  first  disposed  to  act  on  the 
old  maxim  that  freethought  is  bad  for  the  common 
people.  In  1743-4  he  caused  to  be  suppressed  two 
German  treatises  by  one  Gebhardt,  attacking  the 
Biblical  miracles  ;  and  in  1748  he  sent  a  young  man 
named  Riidiger  to  Spandau  for  six  months'  confinement 
for  printing  an  anti-Christian  work  by  one  Dr.  Pott.' 
But  as  he  grew  more  confident  in  his  own  methods  he 
extended  to  men  of  his  own  way  of  thinking  the  tolera- 
tion he  allowed  to  all  religionists,  save  insofar  as  he 
vetoed  the  mutual  vituperation  of  the  sects,  and  such 
proselytising  as  tended  to  create  strife.  With  an  even 
hand  he  protected  Catholics,  Greek  Christians,  and 
Unitarians,  letting  them  have  churches  where  they 
would  •,'^  and  when,  after  the  battle  of  Striegau,  a  body 
of  Protestant  peasantry  asked  his  permission  to  slay  all 
the  Catholics  they  could  find,  he  answered  with  the 
Gospel  precept,  "Love  your  enemies."^  Beyond  the 
toleration  of  all  forms  of  religion,  however,  he  never 
went  ;  and  he  himself,  chiefly  by  way  of  French  verses, 
added  to  the  literature  of  deism.  Bayle  was  his  favourite 
study  ;  and  as  the  then  crude  German  literature  had  no 
attraction  for  him,  he  drew  to  his  court  many  distin- 
guished Frenchmen,  including  La  Mettrie,  Maupertuis, 
D'Alembert,  D'Argens,  and  above  all  Voltaire,  between 

'  Schlosser,  Hist,  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Eng.  trans.  1843,  i,  150; 
Hagenbach,  trans,  p.  66. 

^  Hag-enbach,  trans,  p.  63.  3  Id.,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  232. 


GERMANY  273 


whom  and  him  there  was  an  incurable  incompatibiHty  of 
temper  and  character,  which  left  them  admiring  without 
respecting  each  other,  and  unable  to  abstain  from  mutual 
vituperation.  Under  Frederick's  vigorous  rule  all  speech 
was  free  save  such  as  he  considered  personally  offensive, 
as  Voltaire's  attack  on  Maupertuis  ;  and  after  a  stormy 
reign  he  could  say,  when  asked  by  Prince  William  of 
Brunswick  whether  he  did  not  think  religion  one  of  the 
best  supports  of  a  king's  authority,  "  I  find  order  and  the 

laws  sufficient Depend  upon  it,  countries  have  been 

admirably    governed    when     your     religion      had     no 
existence."' 

As  the  first  modern  freethinking-  king-,  Frederick  is  some- 
thing of  a  test  case.  Son  of  a  man  of  narrow  mind  and  odious 
character,  he  was  himseU"  no  admirable  type,  being-  neither 
benevolent  nor  considerate,  neither  truthful  nor  generous  ;  and 
in  international  politics  he  plaj-ed  the  old  game  of  unscrupulous 
aggression.  Yet  he  was  not  only  the  most  competent,  but,  as 
regards  home  administration,  the  most  conscientious  king  of 
his  time.  To  find  a  rival  we  must  go  back  to  the  pagan 
Antonines  and  Julian,  or  at  least  to  St.  Louis  of  France,  who, 
however,  was  rather  worsened  than  bettered  by  his  creed  (cp. 
the  argument  of  Faure,  Hist,  de  Saint  Louis,   1866,  i,  242-3  ; 

ii.  597)- 

The  effect  of  Frederick's  training  is  seen  in  his  final  attitude 
to  the  advanced  criticism  of  the  school  of  d'Holbach,  which 
assailed  governments  and  creeds  with  the  same  unsparing 
severity  of  logic  and  moral  reprobation.  Stung  by  the  uncom- 
promising attack,  Frederick  retorts  by  attacking  the  rashness 
which  would  plunge  nations  into  civil  strife  because  kings 
miscarry  where  no  human  wisdom  could  avoid  miscarriage. 
He  who  had  wantonly  plunged  all  Germany  into  a  hell  of  war 
for  his  sole  ambition,  bringing  myriads  to  misery,  thousands 
to  violent  death,  and  hundreds  of  his  own  soldiers  to  suicide, 
could  be  virtuously  indignant  at  the  irresponsible  audacity  of 
writers  who  indicted  the  whole  existing  system  for  its  imbecility 
and  injustice.  But  he  did  reason  on  the  criticism  ;  he  did 
ponder  it ;  he  did  feel  bound  to  meet  argument  with  argument  ; 
and  he  gave  his  arguments  to  the  world.  The  advance  on 
previous  regal    practice  is   enormous  :    the  whole   problem    of 

'  Thii^bault,  Mes  Souvenirs  de  Vingt  Ans  de  Sdjour  a  Berlin,  1S04,  i, 
77-79.  See  ii,  78-80,  as  to  the  baselessness  of  the  stories  {e.g.,  Pusey, 
Histor.  Inquiry  into  German  Rationalism,  p.  123)  that  Frederick  chang-ed 
his  views  in  old  age. 

VOL.   II  J 


274  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

politics  is  at  once  brought  to  the  test  of  judgment  and  per- 
suasion. Beside  the  Christian  Georges  and  the  Louis's  of  his 
century,  and  beside  his  Cliristian  father,  liis  superiority  in  judg- 
ment and  even  in  character  is  signal.  Such  was  the  great 
deist  king  of  the  deist  age  ;  a  deist  of  the  least  religious  temper 
and  of  no  very  fine  moral  material  to  begin  with. 

The  one  contemporar}-  monarch  who  in  any  way  compares 
with  him  in  enlightenment,  Joseph  II  of  Austria,  belonged  to 
the  same  school.  The  main  charge  against  Frederick  as  a 
ruler  is  that  he  did  not  act  up  to  the  ideals  of  the  school  of 
Voltaire.  In  reply  to  the  demand  of  the  French  deists  for 
an  abolition  of  all  superstitious  teaching,  he  observed  that 
among  the  16,000,000  inhabitants  of  France  at  most  200,000 
were  capable  of  philosophic  views,  and  that  the  remaining 
15,800,000  were  held  to  their  opinions  by  "insurmountable 
obstacles."  Such  an  answer  meant  that  he  had  no  idea  of  so 
spreading  instruction  that  all  men  should  have  a  chance  of 
reaching  rational  beliefs.  {Examen  de  VEssai  surles  prepiges, 
1769.  See  the  passage  in  Levy-Bruhl,  L^AUemagne  depicts 
Leibniz,  p.  89.)  This  attitude  was  his  inheritance  from  the 
past.  Yet  it  was  under  him  that  Germany  began  to  figure  as  a 
first-rate  culture  force  in  Europe. 

12.  The  most  systematic  propaganda  of  the  new  ideas 
was  that  carried  on  in  the  periodical  published  by  F. 
NicoLAi  under  the  title  of  The  General  German 
Library  (founded  1765),  which  began  with  fifty  contri- 
butors, and  at  the  height  of  its  power  had  a  hundred  and 
thirty,  among  them  being  Lessing,  Eberhard,  and 
Moses  Mendelssohn.  To  Nicolai  is  fully  due  the  genial 
tribute  paid  to  him  by  Heine,'  were  it  only  for  the 
national  service  of  his  "Library."  Its  many  transla- 
tions from  the  English  and  French  freethinkers,  older 
and  newer,  concurred  with  native  work  to  spread  a 
deistic  rationalism,  now  known  as  Aitfklaruug,  or 
enlightenment,  through  the  whole  middle  class  of 
Germany. "^  Native  writers  in  independent  works  added 
to  the  propaganda.  Andreas  Riem  (1749-1807),  a 
Berlin    preacher,    appointed    by    Frederick   a    hospital 

i 

'  Zttr  Gesch.  der  Relig.  und  Philos.  in  Deufschland — Werke,  ed.  1876, 
ill,  63-64.  Goethe's  blame  (IF.  loid  D.,  B.  vii)  is  passed  on  purely 
literary  grounds. 

-  Hag-enbach,  trans,  pp.  103-4;  Cairns,  p.  177. 


GERMANY  275 


chaplain/  wrote  anonymously  against  priestcraft  as  no 
other  priest  had  yet  done.  "No  class  of  men,"  he 
declared,  "  has  ever  been  so  pernicious  to  the  world  as 
the  priesthood.  There  were  laws  at  all  times  against 
murderers  and  bandits,  but  not  against  the  assassin  in 
the  priestly  garb.  War  was  repelled  by  war,  and  it 
came  to  an  end.  The  war  of  the  priesthood  against 
reason  has  lasted  for  thousands  of  years,  and  it  still  goes 
on  without  ceasing."^  Georg  Schade  (1712-1795), 
who  appears  to  have  been  one  of  the  believers  in  the 
immortality  of  animals,  and  who  in  1770  was  imprisoned 
for  his  opinions  in  the  island  of  Christiansoe,  was  no 
less  emphatic,  declaring,  in  a  work  on  Natural  Religion 
on  the  lines  of  Tindal  (1760),  that  "all  who  assert  a 
supernatural  religion  are  godless  impostors."^  Con- 
structive work  of  great  importance,  again,  was  done 
by  J.  B.  Basedow  (1723-1790),  who  early  became  an 
active  deist,  but  distinguished  himself  chiefly  as  an 
educational  reformer,  on  the  inspiration  of  Rousseau's 
Emile,''  setting  up  a  system  which  "tore  education  away 
from  the  Christian  basis, "^  and  becoming  in  virtue  of 
that  one  of  the  most  popular  writers  of  his  day.  It  is 
latterly  admitted  even  by  orthodoxy  that  school  educa- 
tion in  Germany  had  in  the  seventeenth  century  become 
a  matter  of  learning  by  rote,  and  that  such  reforms  as 
had  been  set  up  in  some  of  the  schools  of  the  Pietists 
had  in  Basedow's  day  come  to  nothing.^  As  Basedow 
was  the  first  to  set  up  vigorous  reforms,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  call  him  an  instaurator  of  rational  education, 
whose  chief  fault  was  to  be  too  far  ahead  of  his  age. 
This,  rather  than  any  personal  defect,  was  the  cause  of 
the  failure  of  his  "  Philanthropic  Institute,"  established 
in  1771,  on  the   invitation  of  the  Prince  of  Dessau,  to 

'  This  post  he  left  to  become  secretary  of  the  Academy  of  Painting-. 
^  Cited  bv  Piinjer,  i,  545-6. 

3    Id.   p.   546. 

•»  Hag-enbach,  trans,    pp.   100-3  ;    Saintes,  pp.    91-92  ;   Piinjer,  p.  536  ; 
Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  7. 

5  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  298,  351. 
^  Id.  i,  294  sq. 


276  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

carry  out  his  educational  ideals.  Quite  a  number  of 
other  institutions,  similarly  planned,  after  his  lead,  by 
men  of  the  same  way  of  thinking,  as  Canope  and 
Salzmann,  in  the  same  period,  had  no  better  success. 

Goethe,  who  was  clearly  much  impressed  by  Basedow,  and 
travelled  with  him,  draws  a  somewhat  antagonistic  picture  of 
him  on  retrospect  ( Wahrheit  unci  Dichtung,  B.  xiv).  He 
accuses  him  in  particular  of  always  obtruding'  his  anti-orthodox 
opinions  ;  not  choosing  to  admit  that  religious  opinions  were 
being  constantly  obtruded  on  Basedow.  Praising  Lavater  for 
his  more  amiable  nature,  Goethe  reveals  that  Lavater  was 
constantly  obtruding  his  orthodoxy.  Goethe,  in  fine,  was 
always  lenient  to  pietism,  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up, 
and  to  which  he  was  wont  to  make  sentimental  concessions. 
Hagenbach  notes  (i,  298,  note),  without  any  deprecation,  that 
after  Basedow  had  published  in  1763-4  his  Philalethie,  a 
perfectly  serious  treatise  on  natural  as  against  revealed  religion, 
one  of  the  many  orthodox  answers,  that  by  Pastor  Goeze,  so 
inflamed  against  him  the  people  of  his  native  town  of  Hamburg 
that  he  could  not  show  himself  there  without  danger.  And  this 
is  the  man  accused  of  "  obtruding  his  views."  Baur  is  driven, 
by  way  of  disparagement  of  Basedow  and  his  school,  to  censure 
their  self-confidence — precisely  the  quality  which,  in  religious 
teachers  with  whom  he  agreed,  he  as  a  theologian  would  treat 
as  a  mark  of  superiority.  Baur's  attack  on  the  moral  utili- 
tarianism of  the  school  is  still  less  worthy  of  him.  {Gesch.  der 
christlichen  Ktrche,  iv,  595-6.) 

Yet  another  influential  deist  was  Johann  August 
Eberhard  ( 1 739-1809),  for  a  time  a  preacher  at 
Charlottenburg,  but  driven  out  of  the  church  for  the 
heresy  of  his  New  Apology  of  Sokrates ;  or  the  Final 
Salvation  of  the  Heathen  (1772).  The  work  in  effect 
placed  Sokrates  on  a  level  with  Jesus,'  which  was 
blasphemy.-  But  the  outcry  attracted  the  attention  of 
Frederick,  who  made  Eberhard  a  Professor  of  Philo- 
sophy at  Halle,  where,  later,  he  opposed  the  idealism 
of  both  Kant  and  Fichte.  Substantially  of  the  same 
school  was  the  less  pronouncedly  deistic  cleric  Stein- 
BART,3  author  of  a  utilitarian  System  of  Pure  Pliilosophy, 

'  Hag-enbach,  trans,  p.  109. 

-  Eberhard,    however,  is  respectfully  treated   by  Lessing   in   his   dis- 
cussion on  Leibnitz's  view  as  to  eternal  punishment. 
3  Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  8. 


GERMANY  277 


or  Christian  doctrine  of  Happiness^  now  forgotten,  who 
had  been  variously  influenced  by  Locke  and  Voltaire.' 
Among  the  less  heterodox  but  still  rationalising  clergy 
of  the  period  were  J.  J.  Spalding,  author  of  a  work  on 
The  Utility  of  the  Preacher's  Office^  a  man  of  the 
type  labelled  "Moderate"  in  the  Scotland  of  the  same 
period,  and  as  such  antipathetic  to  emotional  pietists  ;- 
and  Zollikofer,  of  the  same  school — both  inferribly 
influenced  by  the  deism  of  their  day.  Considerably 
more  of  a  rationalist  than  these  was  the  clergyman 
W.  A.  Teller  (i  734-1804),  author  of  a  New  Testament 
Lexicon,  who  reached  a  position  virtually  deistic,  and 
intimated  to  the  Jews  of  Berlin  that  he  would  receive 
them  into  his  church  on  their  making  a  deistic  profession 
of  faith. 3 

13.  If  it  be  true  that  even  the  rationalising  defenders 
of  Christianity  led  men  on  the  whole  towards  deism,"* 
much  more  must  this  hold  true  of  the  new  school  who 
applied  rationalistic  methods  to  religious  questions  in 
their  capacity  as  theologians.  Of  this  school  the 
founder  was  Johann  Salomo  Semler  (1725-1791), 
who,  trained  as  a  Pietist  at  Halle,  early  thought  himself 
into  a  more  critical  attitude, ^  albeit  remaining  a  theo- 
logical teacher.  As  early  as  1750,  in  a  Treatise  on  the 
Canon  of  Scripture,  he  set  forth  the  view,  developed  a 
century  later  by  Baur,  that  the  early  Christian  Church 
contained  a  Pauline  and  a  Petrine  party,  mutually 
hostile.  The  merit  of  his  research  won  him  a  professor- 
ship at  Halle  ;  and  this  position  he  held  till  his  death, 
despite  such  heresy  as  his  rejection  from  the  canon  of 
the  books  of  Ruth,  Esther,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  the  Song 

'  Saintes,  pp.  92-3. 

^  Cp.  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  348,  363. 

3  Id.  i,  367;  trans,  pp.  124-5;  Saintes,  p.  94.  Pusey  (150-1,  note) 
speaks  of  Teller  and  Spaldingf  as  belonging,  with  Nicolai,  Mendelssohn, 
and  others,  to  a  "  secret  institute,  whose  object  was  to  remodel  religion 
and  alter  the  form  of  government."     This  seems  to  be  a  fantasy. 

*  So  Steffens,  cited  by  Hagenbach,  trans,  p.  124. 

s  See  Pusey,  140-1,  >iote,  for  Semler's  account  of  the  rigid  and  un- 
reasoning orthodoxy  against  which  he  reacted.  (Citing  Semler's  Auto- 
biography, Th.  ii,  pp.  i2i-i6i.) 


278  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

of  Solomon,  the  two  books  of  Chronicles,  and  the 
Apocalypse,  in  \{\sFreie  Untersiichung  des  Canons  (1771) 
— a  work  apparently  inspired  by  the  earlier  performance 
of  Richard  Simon.'  His  intellectual  life  was  a  long 
advance,  always  in  the  direction  of  a  more  rationalistic 
comprehension  of  religious  history  ;  and  he  reached,  for 
his  day,  a  remarkably  critical  view  of  the  mythical 
element  in  the  Old  Testament. ""  Thus  he  recognised 
the  mythical  character  of  the  story  of  Samson,  and  was 
at  least  on  the  way  towards  a  scientific  handling  of  the 
New  Testament.3  But  in  his  period  and  environment 
a  systematic  rationalism  was  impossible;  and  his  powers 
were  expended  in  an  immense  number  of  works, ^  which 
failed  to  yield  any  orderly  system,  while  setting  up  a 
great  general  stimulus.  In  his  latter  days  he  strongly 
opposed  and  condemned  the  more  radical  rationalism 
of  his  pupil  Bahrdt,  and  of  the  posthumous  work  of 
Reimarus  ;  but  his  own  influence  in  promoting 
rationalism  is  obvious  and  unquestioned, ^  and  he  is 
rightly  to  be  reckoned  the  main  founder  of  "  German 
rationalism" — that  is,  academic  rationalism  on  theo- 
logical lines. 

14.  Much  more  notorious  than  any  other  German 
deist  of  his  time  was  Carl  Friedrich  Bahrdt  (1741- 
1792),  a  kind  of  Teutonic  Voltaire,  and  the  most 
popularly  influential  German  freethinker  of  his  age. 
In  all  he  is  said  to  have  published  a  hundred  and 
twenty-six  books  and  tracts,^  thus  approximating  to 
Voltaire  in  quantity  if  not  in  quality.  Theological 
hatred  has  so  pursued  him  that  it  is  hard  to  form  a  fair 
opinion  as  to  his  character  ;  but  the  record  runs  that  he 
led  a  somewhat  Bohemian  and  disorderly  life,  though 
a  very  industrious  one.  While  a  preacher  in  Leipzig  in 
1768  he  first  got  into  trouble — "  persecution,"  by  his  own 

'  Cp.  Saintes,  pp.  1 29-131. 

'  Cp.  Gostwick,  p.  51  ;   Piinjer,  i,  561. 

3  Cp.  Saintes,  p.  132  sq. 

■t  A  hundred  and  seventy-four  in  all.      Piinjer,  i,  560. 

5  Pusey,  p.  142  ;  A.  S.  Farrar,  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought,  p.  313. 

*  Gostwick,  p.  53 ;   Piinjer,  i,  546,  note. 


GERMANY  279 


account;  "disgrace  for  licentious  conduct,"  by  that  of 
his  enemies.  That  there  was  no  serious  disgrace  is 
suggested  by  the  fact  that  he  was  appointed  Professor 
of  Biblical  Antiquities  at  Erfurt ;  and  soon  afterwards, 
on  the  recommendation  of  Semler  and  Ernesti,  at 
Giessen  (1771).  While  holding  that  post  he  published 
his  translation  of  the  New  Testament,  done  from  the 
point  of  view  of  belief  in  revelation,  following  it  up 
by  his  Ne'w  Revelations  of  God  in  Letters  and  Tales 
(1773),  which  aroused  Protestant  hostility.  After  teach- 
ing for  a  time  in  a  new  Swiss  "  Philanthropin  " — an 
educational  institution  on  Basedow's  lines — he  obtained 
a  post  as  a  district  ecclesiastical  superintendent  in 
Tiirkheim  ;  whereafter  he  was  enabled  to  set  up  a 
"  Philanthropin "  of  his  own  in  the  castle  of  Heiden- 
heim,  near  Worms.  The  second  edition  of  his  transla- 
tion of  the  New  Testament,  however,  aroused  Catholic 
hostility  in  the  district ;  the  edition  was  confiscated,  and 
he  found  it  prudent  to  make  a  tour  in  Holland  and 
England,  only  to  receive,  on  his  return,  a  missive  from 
the  imperial  consistory  declaring  him  disabled  for  any 
spiritual  office  in  the  Holy  German  Empire.  Seeking 
refuge  in  Halle,  he  found  Semler  grown  hostile  ;  but 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Eberhard,  with  the  result  of 
abandoning  the  remains  of  his  orthodox  faith.  Hence- 
forth he  regarded  Jesus,  albeit  with  admiration,  as 
simply  a  great  teacher,  like  Moses,  Confucius,  Sokrates, 
Semler,  Luther  ;  and  to  this  view  he  gave  effect  in  the 
third  edition  of  his  New  Testament  translation,  which 
was  followed  in  1782  by  his  Letters  on  the  Bible  in 
Popular  Style  {Volkston).  More  and  more  fiercely 
antagonised,  he  duly  retaliated  on  the  clergy  in  his 
Church  and  Heretic  Almanack  (1781)  ;  and  after  for 
a  time  keeping  a  tavern,  ended  not  very  happily  his 
troublous  life  in  Halle  in  1792. 

The  weakest  part  of  Bahrdt's  performance  is  now  seen 
to  be  his  application  of  the  empirical  method  of  the  early 
rationalists,  who  were  wont  to  take  every  Biblical 
prodigy  as  a  merely  perverted  account  of  an    incident 


28o  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

which  certainly  happened.  That  method — which  is  not 
yet  discarded  by  rationalising  theologians — is  reduced 
to  open  absurdity  in  his  hands,  as  when  he  makes 
Moses  employ  fireworks  on  Mount  Sinai,  and  Jesus 
feed  the  five  thousand  by  stratagem,  without  miracle. 
But  it  was  not  by  such  extravagances  that  he  won  and 
kept  a  hearing  throughout  his  life.  It  is  easy  to  see 
on  retrospect  that  the  source  of  his  influence  lay  above 
all  things  in  his  healthy  ethic,  his  own  mode  of  progres- 
sion being  by  way  of  simple  common  sense  and  natural 
feeling,  not  of  critical  research.  His  first  step  in 
rationalism  was  to  ask  himself  "  how  Three  Persons 
could  be  One  God" — this  while  believing  devoutly  in 
revelation,  miracles,  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  and  the 
Atonement.  Under  the  influence  of  a  naturalist 
travelling  in  his  district,  he  gave  up  the  orthodox 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  feeling  himself  "as  if  new- 
born "  in  being  freed  of  what  he  had  learned  to  see  as  a 
"  pernicious  and  damnable  error."'  It  was  for  such 
writing  that  he  was  hated  and  persecuted,  despite  his 
habitual  eulogy  of  Christ  as  "  the  greatest  and  most 
venerable  of  mortals."  His  offence  was  not  against 
morals,  but  against  theology. 

Bahrdt's  real  power  may  be  inferred  from  the  fury  of  some 
of  his  opponents.  "The  wretched  Bahrdt "  is  Dr.  Pusey's 
Christian  account  of  him.  The  American  translators  of  Hagen- 
bach,  Messrs.  Gage  and  Stuckenberg,  have  thought  fit  to 
insert  in  their  chapter-heading  the  phrase  "  Bahrdt,  the 
Theodore  Parker  of  Germany."  As  Hagenbach  has  spoken  of 
Bahrdt  with  special  contempt,  the  intention  can  be  appreciated  ; 
but  the  intended  insult  may  now  serve  as  a  certificate  of  merit 
to  Bahrdt.  Bishop  Hurst  solemnly  affirms  that  "What 
Jeffreys  is  to  the  judicial  history  of  England,  Bahrdt  is  to  the 
religious  history  of  German  Protestantism.  Whatever  he 
touched  was  disgraced  by  the  vileness  of  his  heart  and  the 
Satanic  daring  of  his  mind  "  {History  of  Rationalism,  ed.  1867, 
p.  119;  ed.  1901,  p.  139).  This  concerning  doctrines  of  an 
invariable  moral  soundness,  which  to-day  would  be  almost 
universally  received  with  approbation.  Piinjer,  who  cannot  at 
any  point  indict  the   doctrines,  falls   back  on  the   professional 

'  Geschichte  seines  Lehens. 


GERMANY  281 


device  of  classing  them  with  the  "platitudes"  of  the  Atif- 
klaruiiif;  and,  finding  this  insufficient  to  convey  a  disparaging 
impression  to  the  general  reader,  intimates  that  Bahrdt,  con- 
necting ethic  with  rational  sanitation,  "does  not  shrink  from 
the  coarseness  of  laying  down  "  a  rule  for  bodily  health,  wliich 
Piinjer  does  not  shrink  from  quoting  (pp.  549-50).  Finally 
Bahrdt  is  dismissed  as  "  the  theological  public-house-keeper  of 
Halle."  So  hard  is  it  for  men  clerically  trained  to  attain  to  a 
manly  rectitude  in  their  criticism  of  anti-clericals.  Bahrdt  was 
a  great  admirer  of  the  Gospel  Jesus  ;  so  Cairns  (p.  178)  takes  a 
lenient  view  of  his  life.  On  that  and  his  doctrine  cp.  Hagen- 
bach,  pp.  107-110;  Piinjer,  i,  546-550;  Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  5. 
Goethe  satirised  him  in  a  youthful  Prolog,  but  speaks  of  him 
not  unkindly  in  the  IVahrheit  und  Dichtting. 

15.  Alongside  of  these  propagators  of  popular  ration- 
alism stood  a  group  of  companion  deists  usually- 
considered  together  —  Lessing,  Hermann  Samuel 
Reimarus,  and  Moses  Mendelssohn.  The  last- 
named,  a  Jew,  "  lived  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  deism 
and  of  natural  religion,"'  and  sought,  like  the  deists  in 
general,  to  give  religion  an  ethical  structure  ;  but  he 
was  popular  chiefly  as  a  constructive  theist  and  a 
defender  of  the  doctrine  of  immortality  on  non-Christian 
lines.  His  Phcedoii  (1767),  setting  forth  that  view,  had 
a  great  vogue. ""  One  of  his  more  notable  teachings  was 
an  earnest  declaration  against  any  connection  between 
Church  and  State  ;  but  like  Locke  and  Rousseau  he  so 
far  sank  below  his  own  ideals  as  to  agree  in  arguing  for 
a  State  enforcement  of  a  profession  of  belief  in  a  God^ — 
a  negation  of  his  own  plea.  With  much  contemporary 
popularity,  he  had  no  permanent  influence  ;  and  he 
seems  to  have  been  finally  broken-hearted  by  Jacobi's 
disclosure  of  the  pantheism  of  Lessing. 

See  the  monograph  of  Rabbi  Schreiber,  of  Bonn,  Moses 
Mendelssohn'' s  Verdienste  um  die  deutsche  Nation  (Zurich,  1880), 
pp.    41-42.     The   strongest   claim    made   for  Mendelssohn    by 

'  Baur,  Gesch.  der  chr.  Kirche,  iv,  597. 

-  Translated  into  English  in  17S9. 

3  'is\enA&\%<,o\-\\\,  Jerusalem,  Abschn.  I — Werke,  1838,  p.  239  (Eng.  trans. 
1S38,  pp.  50-51);  Rousseau,  Conirat  Social,  liv.  iv,  ch.  viii,  near  end  ; 
Locke,  as  cited  above,  p.  117.  Cp.  Bartholm^ss,  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr. 
relig.  de  la  pliilos.   moderne,  1855,  i,  145  ;   Baur,  as  last  cited. 


282  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Rabbi  Schreiber  is  that  he,  a  Jew,  was  much  more  of  a  German 
patriot  tiian  Goethe,  Schiller,  or  Lessing.  Heine,  however,  pro- 
nounces that  "As  Luther  against  the  Papacy,  so  Mendelssohn 
rebelled  against  tlie  Talmud "  {Zur  Gesch.  der  Relig.  und 
Philos.  hi  DetitschJand :    Werke,  ed.  1876.  iii,  65). 

Lessing,  on  the  other  hand,  is  one  of  the  outstanding 
figures  in  the  history  of  Biblical  criticism,  as  well  as  of 
German  literature  in  general.  The  son  of  a  Lutheran 
pastor,  Lessing  became  in  a  considerable  measure  a 
rationalist,  while  constantly  resenting,  as  did  Goethe, 
the  treatment  of  religion  in  the  fashion  in  which  he 
himself  treated  non-religious  opinions  with  which  he 
did  not  agree.'  It  is  clear  that  already  in  his  student 
days  he  had  become  an  unbeliever,  and  that  it  was  on 
this  as  well  as  other  grounds  that  he  refused  to  become 
a  clergyman. ""  Nor  was  he  unready  to  jeer  at  the  bigots 
when  they  chanced  to  hate  where  he  was  sym pathetic. ^ 
But  when  the  rationalism  of  the  day  seriously  or  other- 
wise assailed  the  creed  of  his  parents,  whom  he  loved 
and  honoured,  sympathy  in  his  case  as  in  Goethe's 
always  predetermined  his  attitude  ;  and  it  is  not  untruly 
said  of  him  that  he  "  did  prefer  the  orthodox  to  the 
heterodox  party,  like  Gibbon, "-^  inasmuch  as  "the 
balance  of  learning  which  attracted  his  esteem  was 
[then]  on  that  side."  We  thus  find  him  rather  nervously 
rejecting  alike  the  popular  freethought,^  represented  by 

'  See  his  Werke,  ed.  1866,  v,  317 — Aus  dcm  B?-iefe,die  neiieste  Literatur 
betreffeJid,  49ter  Brief. 

-  If  Lessing's  life  were  sketched  in  the  spirit  in  which  orthodoxy  has 
handled  that  of  Bahrdt,  it  could  be  made  unedif^ing-  enough.  Even 
Goethe  remarks  that  Lessing'  "  enjoyed  himself  in  a  disorderly  tavern 
life"  (Wahrheit  mid  Dichtung,  B.  vii) ;  and  all  that  Hagenbach  mali- 
ciously charges  against  Basedow  in  the  way  of  irregularity  of  study  is 
true  of  him.  0\\  that  and  other  points,  usually  g-losed  over,  see  the 
sketch  in  Taylor's  Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry,  1830,  i,  332-7.  All 
the  while,  Lessing  is  an  essentially  sound-hearted  and  estimable  per- 
sonality ;  and  he  would  probably  have  been  the  last  man  to  echo  the  tone 
of  the  orthodox  towards  the  personal  life  of  the  freethinkers  who  went 
further  than  he. 

3  E.g.  his  fable  The  Bull  and  the  Calf  {Fabeln,  ii,  5),  apropos  of  the 
clergy  and  Bayle. 

•*  Taylor,  as  cited,  p.  361. 

5  See  his  rather  crude  comedy,  Der  Freigeist,  and  Sime's  Life  ofLessitigy 
i,  41-2. 


GERMANY  ■  283 


his  friend  Mylius,'  and  the  attempts  of  the  rationalising 
clergy  to  put  religion  on  a  common-sense  basis.  For 
himself,  he  framed  (or  perhaps  adopted)-  a  theory  of  the 
Education  of  the  Human  Race  (1780),  which  has  served 
the  semi-rationalistic  clergy  of  our  own  day  in  good 
stead  ;  and  adapted  Rousseau's  catching  doctrine  that 
the  true  test  of  religion  lies  in  feeling  and  not  in  argu- 
ment.^  Neither  doctrine  has  a  whit  more  philosophical 
value  than  the  other  "  popular  philosophy  "  of  the  time, 
and  neither  was  fitted  to  have  much  immediate  influence; 
but  both  pointed  a  way  to  the  more  philosophic  apolo- 
gists of  religion,  while  baulking  the  orthodox.^  "  Chris- 
tianity "  he  made  out  to  be  a  "universal  principle," 
independent  of  its  pseudo-historical  setting  ;  thus  giving 
to  the  totality  of  the  admittedly  false  tradition  the  credit 
of  an  ethic  which  in  the  terms  of  the  case  is  simply 
human,  and  in  all  essentials  demonstrably  pre-Christian. 
Lessing,  in  short,  bore  himself  from  first  to  last  as  the 
son  of  a  pastor,  always  finding  for  the  errors  of  his  own 
people  defences  of  a  kind  which  he  would  never  have 
tolerated  in  a  discussion  on  any  other  issue.  Nonethe- 
less, he  must  be  credited  with  some  measure  of  science, 
and  a  large  measure  of  courage,  for  going  so  far  as  he 
did.  As  the  orthodox  historian  of  rationalism  has  it, 
"  Though  he  did  not  array  himself  as  a  champion  of 
rationalism,  he  proved  himself  one  of  the  strongest  pro- 
moters of  its  reign. "5 

It  was  by  him  that  there  were  published  the  "  Anony- 
mous Fragments"  known  as  the  "  Wolfenblittel  Frag- 
ments "  (1774-1778),  wherein  the  methods  of  the  English 
and  French  deists  are  applied  with  a  new  severity   to 

'  Mylius  for  a  short  time  ran  in  Leipzig  a  journal  called  the  Freethinker. 

-  As  to  the  authorship,  see  Saintes,  pp.  101-2  ;  and  Sime's  Life  of 
Lessing,  i,  261-2,  where  the  counter-claim  is  rejected. 

3  Ziir  Geschichfe  und  Literatur,  aus  dem  4ten  Beitr. —  Werhe,  vi,  142 
sq.  See  also  in  his  Theologische  Streitschriften  the  Axiomata  written 
against  Pastor  Goeze.  Cp.  Schwarz,  Lessing  als  Theologe,  pp.  146, 
151  ;  and  Pusey,  as  cited,  p.  51,  note. 

t  Compare  the  regrets  of  Pusey  (pp.  51,  155),  Cairns  (p.  195),  Hagen- 
bach  (pp.  89-97),  ''•"'^  Saintes  (p.  100). 

5  Hurst,  History  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  130. 


284  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

both  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  narratives.  It  is 
now  put  beyond  doubt  that  they  were  the  work  of 
Reimarus/  who  had  in  1755  published  a  defence  of 
"  Natural  Religion  " — that  is,  of  the  theory  of  a  Provi- 
dence— against  La  Mettrie,  Maupertuis,  and  older 
materialists,  which  had  a  great  success  in  its  day."* 
At  his  death,  accordingly,  Reimarus  ranked  as  an 
admired  defender  of  theism  and  of  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality.'' He  was  the  son-in-law  of  the  famous  scholar 
Fabricius,  and  was  for  many  years  Professor  of  Oriental 
Languages  in  the  Hamburg  Academy.  The  famous 
research  which  preserves  his  memory  was  begun  by 
him  at  the  age  of  fifty,  for  his  own  satisfaction,  and  was 
elaborated  by  him  during  twenty  years,  while  he  silently 
endured  the  regimen  of  the  intolerant  Lutheranism  of 
his  day.*  As  he  left  the  book,  it  was  a  complete  treatise, 
entitled  An  Apology  for  the  Rational  Worshipper  of 
God;  but  the  friends  to  whom  he  left  the  MS.,  of  whom 
Lessing  was  the  accepted  representative,  ventured  only 
to  publish  certain  "  Fragments  "^  dealing  with  the  prob- 
lems of  the  gospel  history  and  of  revelation  in  general. 
These,  however,  constituted  the  most  serious  attack  yet 
made  in  Germany  on  the  current  creed,  though  its  theory 
of  the  true  manner  of  the  gospel  history  of  course  smacks 
of  the  pre-scientific  period.  A  generation  later,  how- 
ever, they  were  still  "  the  radical  book  of  the  anti- 
supernaturalists  "  in  Germany.^ 

The  method  is,  to  accept  as  real  occurrences  all  the  non- 

'  Stahr,  Lessiiig,  sein  Leben  und  seine  Werke,  yte  Aufl.  ii,  243.  Lessingf 
said  the  report  to  this  effect  was  a  lie  ;  but  this  and  other  mystifications 
appear  to  have  been  by  way  of  fulfilling;  his  promise  of  secresy  to  the 
Reimarus  family.  Cairns,  pp.  203,  209.  Cp.  Farrar,  Crit.  Hist,  of  Free- 
thought,  note  29. 

-  See  it  analysed  by  Bartholm^ss,  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  relig.  dc  la philos. 
nioderne,  i,  147-167. 

3  Gostwick,  p.  47  ;  Bartholm^ss,  i,  166.  His  book  was  translated  into 
Eng-lish  (The  Principal  Truths  of  Natural  Religion  Defended  and  Illus- 
trated) in  1766;  into  Dutch  in  1758;  in  part  into  French  in  1768;  and 
seven  editions  of  the  original  had  appeared  by  1798. 

''  Stahr,  ii,  241-4. 

5  These  were  republished  separately  with  the  title  Von  de^n  Zivecke 
Jesus  und  seiner  Jiinger,  Braunschweig",  1778. 

^  W.  Taylor,  Historic  Survey  of  German  Poetry,  1830,  i,  365. 


GERMANY 


*-°3 


miraculous  episodes,  and  to  explain  them  by  a  general  theory. 
Thus  the  appointment  of  tlie  seventy  apostles — a  palpable 
myth — is  taken  as  a  fact,  and  explained  as  part  of  a  scheme  by 
Jesus  to  obtain  temporal  power  ;  and  the  scourging  of  the 
money-changers  from  the  Temple,  improbable  enough  as  it 
stands,  is  made  still  more  so  by  supposing  it  to  be  part  of  a 
scheme  of  insurrection.  See  the  sketch  in  Cairns,  p.  197  sq., 
which  indicates  the  portions  of  the  treatise  produced  later  by 
Strauss.  Cp.  Piinjer,  i,  550-7  ;  Noack,  Th.  iii,  Kap.  4.  It  is 
but  fair  to  say  that  Reimarus'  fallacy  of  method  has  not  yet 
disappeared  from  criticism. 

Though  Lessing-  professed  to  combat  the  positions  of 
the  Fragments,  he  was  led  into  a  fiery  controversy  over 
them,  and  the  series  was  finally  stopped  by  authority. 
There  can  now  be  no  doubt  that  Lessing  at  heart  agreed 
with  Reimarus  on  most  points  of  negative  criticism/ 
while  reaching  a  different  emotional  estimate  and 
attitude.  Thereafter,  as  a  final  check  to  his  opponents, 
he  produced  his  famous  drama  Nathan  the  Wise,  which 
embodies  Boccaccio's  story  of  The  Three  Rings,  and  has 
ever  since  served  as  a  popular  lesson  of  tolerance  in 
Germany.-  In  the  end,  he  seems  to  have  become  to 
some  extent  a  pantheist  ;^  but  he  never  expounded  any 
coherent  and  comprehensive  set  of  opinions,  preferring, 
as  he  put  it  in  an  oft-quoted  sentence,  the  state  of  search 
for  truth  to  any  consciousness  of  possessing  it, 

16.  Deism  was  now  as  prevalent  in  educated  Germany 
as  in  France  or  England  ;  and,  according  to  a  contem- 
porary preacher,  "  Berliner"  was  about  1777  a  synonym 
for    "  rationalist."-*      Wieland,     one    of     the     foremost 

'  Stahr,  ii,  254. 

-  Cp.  Introd.  to  Willis's  trans,  oi  Nathan. 

3  See  Cairns,  Apperidix,  Note  I,  and  Willis,  Spinoza,  pp.  149-162, 
giving-  the  testimony  of  Jacobi.  Cp.  Piinjer,  i,  564-585.  But  Heine 
laughingly  adjures  IMoses  Mendelssohn,  who  grieved  so  intensely  over 
Lessing's  Spinozism,   to   rest  quiet   in  his    grave  :    "  Thy   Lessing  was 

indeed  on  the  way  to  that  terrible  error but  the  Highest,  the  Father 

in  Heaven,  saved  him  in  time  by  death.  He  died  a  good  deist,  like  thee 
and  Nicolai  and  Teller  and  the  Universal  German  Library  "  (Zur  Gesch. 
der  Rel.  und  Philos.  in  Deutschland,  B.  ii,  near  exxA.—  Werke,  ed.  1876, 
iii,  69). 

■»  Cited  by  Hurst,  Hist,  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  125.  Outside  Berlin, 
however,  matters  went  otherwise  till  late  in  the  century.  Kurz  tells 
{Gesch.  der  deutschen  Literatur,  ii,  461    6)  that   "the  indifference  of  the 


286  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

German  men  of  letters  of  his  time,  is  known  to  have 
been  a  deist  of  the  school  of  Shaftesbury  ;'  and  in  the 
leading  journal  of  the  day  he  wrote  on  the  free  use  of 
reason  in  matters  of  faith.-'  Some  acts  of  persecution  by 
the  church  show  how  far  the  movement  had  gone.  In 
1774  we  find  a  Catholic  professor  at  Mayence,  Lorenzo 
Isenbiehl,  deposed  and  sent  back  to  the  seminary  for 
two  years  on  the  score  of  "  deficient  theological  know- 
ledge," because  he  argued  that  the  text  Isaiah  vii,  14 
applied  not  to  the  mother  of  Jesus  but  to  a  contemporary 
of  the  prophet ;  and  when,  four  years  later,  he  published 
a  book  on  the  same  thesis,  in  Latin,  he  was  imprisoned. 
Three  years  later  still,  a  young  Jesuit  of  Salzburg,  named 
Steinbuhler,  was  actually  condemned  to  death  for  writing 
some  satires  on  Roman  Catholic  ceremonies,  and,  though 
afterwards  pardoned,  died  of  the  ill-usage  he  had  under- 
gone in  prison. 3 

The  spirit  of  rationalism,  however,  was  now  so 
prevalent  that  it  began  to  dominate  the  work  of  the 
more  intelligent  theologians,  to  whose  consequent 
attempts  to  strain  out  by  the  most  dubious  means  the 
supernatural  elements  from  the  Bible  narratives^  the 
name  of  "  rationalism  "  came  to  be  specially  applied, 
that  being  the  kind  of  criticism  naturally  most  discussed 
among  the  clergy.  Taking  rise  broadly  in  the  work  of 
Semler,  reinforced  by  that  of  the  English  and  French 
deists  and  that  of  Reimarus,  the  method  led  stage  by 
stage  to  the  scientific  performance  of  Strauss  and  Baur, 
and  the  recent  "  higher  criticism  "  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments.      Noteworthy  at  its  outset  as  exhibiting  the 

learned  towards  nativ'e  literature  was  so  great  that  even  in  the  year 
1761  Abbt  could  write  that  in  Rinteln  there  was  nobody  who  knew  the 
names  of  Moses  Mendelssohn  and  Lessing." 

'  Karl  Hillebrand,  Six  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Germati  Thought, 
1880,  p.  109. 

-  Deutsche  Merkur,  January  and  March,  1788  ( Werke,  ed.  1797, 
vol.  xxix,  pp.  1-144  :  cited  by  Staudlin,  Gesch.  der  Rationalis7nus  und 
Supernatui-alis?Hus,  1826,  p.  233). 

3  Kurtz,  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Church,  Engf.  trans.  1864,  ii,  224. 

••  The  method  had  been  broached  in  the  modern  period  in  the  Evan- 
geliuin  medici  of  Connor.  See  above,  p.  124.  But  see  also  vol.  i,  p.  368, 
as  to  its  earlier  employment  by  Pomponazzi. 


GERMANY  287 


tendency  of  official  believers  to  make  men,  in  the  words 
of  Lessing,  irrational  philosophers  by  way  of  making 
them  rational  Christians/  this  order  of  "  rationalism  "  in 
its  intermediate  stages  belongs  rather  to  the  history  of 
Biblical  scholarship  than  to  that  of  freethought,  since 
more  radical  work  was  being  done  by  unprofessional 
writers  outside,  and  deeper  problems  were  raised  by  the 
new  systems  of  philosophy.  Within  the  Lutheran  pale, 
however,  there  were  some  hardy  thinkers.  A  striking 
figure  of  the  time,  in  respect  of  his  courage  and 
thoroughness,  is  the  Lutheran  pastor  Schulz,"  who  so 
strongly  combated  the  compromises  of  the  Semler 
school  in  regard  to  the  Pentateuch,  and  argued  so 
plainly  for  a  severance  of  morals  from  religion,  as  to 
bring  about  his  own  dismissal  (i792).3 

This  appears  to  have  been  the  only  juridical  result  of 
the  orthodox  edict  (1788)  of  the  new  king,  Frederick 
William,  the  brother  of  Frederick,  who  succeeded  in 
1786.  It  announced  him  as  the  champion  of  religion 
and  the  enemy  of  freethinking  ;  forbade  all  prosely- 
tising, and  menaced  with  penalties  all  forms  of  heresy,"* 
while  professing  to  maintain  freedom  of  conscience. 
The  edict  seems  to  have  been  specially  provoked  by 
fresh  literature  of  a  pronouncedly  freethinking  stamp. 
In  1785  appeared  the  anonymous  Moroccan  Letters,^ 
wherein,  after  the  model  of  the  Persian  Letters  and 
others,  the  life  and  creeds  of  Germany  are  handled  in 
a  quite  Voltairean  fashion.  The  writer  is  evidently 
familiar  with  French  and  English  deistic  literature,  and 
draws  freely  on  both,  making  no  pretence  of  systematic 
treatment.  Such  writing,  quietly  turning  a  disenchant- 
ing light  of  common  sense  on  Scriptural  incredibilities 

'  Letter  to  his  brother,  February  2nd,  1774. 

^  Known  as  Zopf-Schulz  from  his  wearing  a  pigftail  in  the  fashion  then 
common  among-  the  laity. 

3  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  372  ;  Gostwick,  pp.  52,  54. 

•♦  See  the  details  in  Hagenbach,  Kirchengeschichte,  i,  368-372. 

5  Marokka>iische  Briefe.  Aus  dem  Arabischen.  Frankfurt  and  Leipzig, 
1785.  The  Letters  purport  to  have  been  written  by  one  of  the  Moroccan 
embassy  at  Vienna  in  1783. 


288  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

and  Christian  historical  scandals,  without  a  trace  of 
polemical  zeal,  illustrated  at  once  the  futility  of  Kant's 
claim,  in  the  second  edition  of  his  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason^  to  counteract  "  freethinking  unbelief"  by  trans- 
cendental philosophy.  And  though  the  writer  is 
careful  to  point  to  the  frequent  association  of  Christian 
fanaticism  with  regicide,  his  very  explicit  appeal  for  a 
unification  of  Germany,'  his  account  of  the  German 
Protestant  peasant  and  labourer  as  the  most  dismal 
figure  in  Germany,  Holland,  and  Switzerland,-  and  his 
charge  against  Germans  of  degrading  their  women, ^ 
would  not  enlist  the  favour  of  the  authorities  for  his 
work.  Within  two  years  (1787)  appeared  an  even  more 
strongly  anti-Christian  and  anti-clerical  work,  The  Only 
True  System  of  the  Christian  Religion^''  ascribed  to 
Jakob  von  Mauvillon^  (i  743-1 794),  a  historian  and 
economist,  and  also  an  officer  in  the  service  of  the  Duke 
of  Brunswick,  who  nevertheless  became  a  great  admirer 
of  the  French  Revolution.  To  such  propaganda  the 
edict  of  repression  was  the  official  answer.  It  naturally 
roused  a  strong  opposition  ;°  but  though  it  ultimately 
failed,  through  the  general  breakdown  of  European 
despotisms,  it  was  not  without  injurious  effect.  The 
first  edict  was  followed  in  a  few  months  by  one  which 
placed  the  press  and  all  literature,  native  and  foreign, 
under  censorship.  This  policy,  which  was  chiefly 
inspired  by  the  new  king's  Minister  of  Religion, 
Woellner,  was  followed  up  in  1791  by  the  appointment 
of  a  committee  of  three  reactionaries — Hermes,  Hilmer, 
and  Woltersdorf — Avho  not  only  saw  to  the  execution  of 
the  edicts,  but  supervised  the  schools  and  churches. 
Such  a  regimen,  aided  by  the  reaction  against  the 
Revolution,  for  a  time  prevented  any  open  propaganda 

'  Briefe,  xxi.  -  P.  49.  3  p.  232. 

■♦  Das  einzig  ivahre  System  der  christlichen  Religion.  It  was  at  first 
composed  under  the  title  False  Reasonings  of  the  Christian  Religion. 

5  Noack,  Th.  Ill,  Kap.  9,  p.  194. 

^  It  was  a  test  of  the  depth  of  the  freethinking-  spirit  in  the  men  of  the 
day.  Semler  justified  the  edict  ;  Bahrdt  vehemently  denounced  it. 
Hagenbach,  i,  372. 


GERMANY  289 


on  the  part  of  men  officially  placed  ;  and  we  shall  see  it 
hampering  and  humiliating  Kant ;  but  it  left  the  leaven 
of  anti-supernaturalism  to  work  all  the  more  effectively 
among  the  increasing  crowd  of  university  students. 

Many  minds  of  the  period,  doubtless,  are  typified  by 
Herder,  who,  though  a  practising  clergyman,  was 
clearly  a  Spinozistic  theist,  accommodating  himself  to 
popular  Christianity  in  a  genially  latitudinarian  spirit.^ 
When  in  his  youth  he  published  an  essay  discussing 
Genesis  as  a  piece  of  oriental  poetry,  not  to  be  treated 
as  science  or  theology,  he  evoked  an  amount  of  hostility 
which  startled  him.^  Learning  his  lesson,  he  was  for 
the  future  guarded  enough  to  escape  persecution.  He 
was  led  by  his  own  temperamental  bias,  however,  to  a 
transcendental  position  in  philosophy.  Originally  in 
agreement  with  Kant,^  as  against  the  current  meta- 
physic,  in  the  period  before  the  issue  of  the  latter's 
Critique  of  Pure  Reason^  he  nourished  his  religious 
instincts  by  a  discursive  reading  of  history,  which  he 
handled  in  a  comparatively  scientific  yet  above  all 
poetic  or  theosophic  spirit,  while  Kant,  who  had  little 
or  no  interest  in  history,  developed  his  thought  on  the 
side  of  physical  science.**  The  philosophic  methods  of 
the  two  men  thus  became  opposed  ;  and  when  Herder 
found  Kant's  philosophy  producing  a  strongly 
rationalistic  cast  of  thought  among  the  divinity 
students  who  came  before  him  for  examination,  he 
directly  and  sharply  antagonised  it^  in  a  theistic  sense. 
Yet  his  own  influence  on  his  age  was  on  the  whole 
latitudinarian  and  anti-theological. 

'  Cp.  Crabb  Robinson's  Diary,  iii,  48  ;  Martineau,  Study  of  Spinoza, 
p.  328 ;  Willis,  Spinoza,  pp.  162-8.  Bishop  Hurst  laments  {Hist,  of 
Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  145)  that  Herder's  early  views  as  to  the  mission 
of  Christ  "  were,  in  common  with  many  other  evangelical  views,  doomed 
to  an  unhappy  obscuration  upon  the  advance  of  his  later  years  by 
frequent  intercourse  with  more  skeptical  minds." 

-   0\\  the   clerical   opposition    to    him  at   Weimar   on    this    score    see 
Diintzer,  Life  of  Goethe,  Eng-.  trans.  1883,  i,  317. 

3  Cp.    Dr.    Moritz     Kronenberg,    Herder's     Philosophic    nach    ihrem 
En  tiv  ickelu  ngsga  ng,  1 889. 

■»  Kronenberg,  p.  90. 

5  Stuckenberg,  Life  of  I mmanuel  Kant ,  1882,  pp.  381-7  ;   Kronenberg, 
Herder s  Philosophie,  pp.  91,  103. 

VOL.    II  U 


290  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

17.  Meanwhile,  the  drift  of  the  age  of  Aufkl'drung 
was  apparent  in  the  practically  freethinking  attitude  of 
the  two  foremost  men  of  letters  in  the  new  Germany — 
Goethe  and  Schiller.  Of  the  former,  despite  the 
bluster  of  Carlyle,  and  despite  the  aesthetic  favour 
shown  to  Christianity  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  no  religious 
ingenuity  can  make  more  than  a  pantheist,^  who, 
in  so  far  as  he  touched  on  Biblical  questions,  copied 
the  half-grown  rationalism  of  the  school  of  Semler.^ 
"The  great  Pagan  "  was  his  common  label  among  his 
orthodox  or  conformist  contemporaries.^  He  has  told 
how,  when  Lavater  insisted  that  he  must  choose  between 
orthodox  Christianity  and  atheism,  he  answered  that,  if 
he  were  not  free  to  be  a  Christian  in  his  own  way  {zvie 
ich  es  bisher  gehegt  hdtie)^  he  would  as  soon  turn  atheist 
as  Christian,  the  more  so  as  he  saw  that  nobody  knew 
very  well  what  either  signified.-*  Nor  did  he  ever  yield 
to  the  Christian  creed  more  than  a  Platonic  amity  ;  so 
that  much  of  the  peculiar  hostility  that  was  long  felt  for 
his  poetry  and  was  long  shown  to  his  memory  in 
Germany  is  to  be  explained  as  an  expression  of  the 
normal  malice  of  pietism  against  unbelievers. ^  To-day 
belief  is  glad  to  claim  Goethe  as  a  friend  in  respect  of 
his  many  concessions  to  it,  as  well  as  of  his  occasional 
flings  at  more   consistent   freethinkers.      But  a  "  great 

'  The  chief  sample  passagfes  in  his  works  are  the  poem  Das  Gottliche 
and  the  speech  oi  Faust  in  reply  to  Gretchen  in  the  garden  scene.  It 
was  the  surmised  pantheism  of  Goethe's  poem  Prometheus  that,  accord- 
ing' to  Jacobi,  drew  from  Lessing-  his  avowal  of  a  pantheistic  leaning-. 
Tlie  poem  has  even  an  atheistic  ring  ;  but  we  have  Goethe's  own  account 
of  the  influence  of  Spinoza  on  him  from  his  youth  onwards  (  Wahrheit 
unci  Diditung,  Th.  Ill,  B.  xiv  ;  Th.  IV,  B.  xvi).  See  also  his  remarks 
on  the  "  natural  "  religion  of  "  conviction  "  or  rational  inference,  and 
that  of  "faith"  {Glaube)  or  revelationism,  in  B.  iv  {Werke,  ed.  1866, 
xi,  134)  ;  also  Kestner's  account  of  his  opinions  at  twenty-three,  in 
Duntzer's  Life,  Eng.  trans,  i,  185 ;  and  again  his  letter  to  Jacobi, 
January  6th,  1813,  quoted  by  Diintzer,  ii,  290. 

^  See  the  Alt-Testamentliches  Appendix  to  the  West-Oestlicher  Divan. 

3  Heine,  Zur  Gesch.  der  Rel.  u.  Phil,  in  Deutschland  {Werke,  ed.  1876, 
iii,  92). 

4  Wahrheit  und  Dichtimg,  Th.  Ill,  B.  xiv,  par.  20  (  Werke,  ed.  1886, 
xii,  159). 

5  Compare,  as  to  the  kinds  of  hostility  he  aroused,  Diintzer's  Life,  i, 
152,  317'  329  30.  451  ;  •''  291  «o/f,455,  461  ;  and  Heine,  last  cit.  p.  93. 


GERMANY  291 


pagan"  he  remains  for  the  student.  In  the  opinion  of 
later  orthodoxy  his  "  influence  on  religion  was  very- 
pernicious."'  He  indeed  showed  small  concern  for 
religious  susceptibilities  when  he  humorously  wrote  that 
from  his  youth  up  he  believed  himself  to  stand  so  well 
with  his  God  as  to  fancy  that  he  might  even  "have 
something  to  forgive  Him."^ 

One  passage  in  Goethe's  essay  on  the  Pentateuch,  appended 
to  the  West-OestUcher  Divan,  is  worth  noting  here  as  illustrating 
the  ability  of  genius  to  cherish  and   propagate  historical  falla- 
cies.    It  runs  :   "The  peculiar,  unique,  and  deepest  theme  of 
the  history  of   the  world    and  man,   to   which    all    others  are 
subordinate,  is  always  the  conflict  of  belief  and  unbelief.     All 
epochs   in  which  belief  rules,  under  whatever  form,  are  illus- 
trious,   inspiriting,   and  fruitful   for  that  time  and   the  future. 
All   epochs,  on   the  other  hand,  in  which  unbelief,  in  whatever 
form,  secures   a  miserable  victory,  even  though  for  a  moment 
they  may  flaunt  it  proudly,  disappear  for  posterity,  because  no 
man  willingly  troubles  himself  with  knowledge  of  the  unfruitful" 
(First  ed.   pp.   424-5).      Goethe  goes  on  to  speak  of  the  four 
latter  books  of  Moses  as  occupied  with  the  theme  oi  unbelief, 
and  of  the  first  as  occupied  with  belief.     Thus  his  formula  was 
based,  to  begin  with,  on  purely  fabulous  history,  into  the  nature 
of  which  his  poetic  faculty  gave  him  wo  true  insight.     (See  his 
idyllic  recast  of  the  patriarchal  history  in  B.  iv  of  the  Wahrheit 
und  Dichtung.')     Applied   to   real   history,  his  formula  has   no 
validity  save  on  a  definition  which  implies  either  an  equivoque 
or  an  argument  in  a  circle.      If  it  refer,  in  the  natural  sense,  to 
epochs    in   which   any  given   religion    is    widely   rejected    and 
assailed,  it  is  palpably  false.     The   Renaissance  and  Goethe's 
own   century  were   ages   of  such  unbelief;    and    they   remain 
much  more  deeply  interesting  than   the  Ages  of  Faith.     St. 
Peter's  at  Rome  is  the  work  of  a  reputedly  unbelieving  Pope. 
If  on  the  other  hand  his  formula  be  meant  to  apply  to  belief  in 
the  sense  of  energy  and  enthusiasm,  it  is  still  fallacious.     The 
crusades  were   manifestations   of  energy  and   enthusiasm  ;  but 
they  were  profoundly   "unfruitful,"  and    they  are  not  deeply 
interesting.     The   only  sense  in  which  Goethe's  formula  could 
stand  would  be  one  In  which  it  is  recognised  that  all  vigorous 
intellectual    life    stands     for     "belief" — that    is    to    say,    that 
Lucretius    and    Voltaire,    Paine    and     d'Holbach,    stand    for 
■"  belief "  when  confidently  attacking  beliefs.     The  formula  is 

'  Hurst,  Hist,  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed.  p.  150. 

^    Wahrheit  und  Diclitung,  B.  viii  ;    Werke,  xi,  334. 


292  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

thus  true  only  in  a  strained  and  non-natural  sense  ;  whereas  it 
is  sure  to  be  read  and  to  be  believed,  by  thoughtless  admirers, 
In  its  natural  and  false  sense,  though  the  whole  history  of 
Byzantium  and  modern  Islam  is  a  history  of  stagnant  and 
unfruitful  belief,  and  that  of  modern  Europe  a  history  of  fruitful 
doubt,  disbelief,  and  denial,  involving  new  affirmations.  Goethe's 
own  mind  on  the  subject  was  in  a  state  of  verbalising  confusion, 
the  result  or  expression  of  his  temperamental  aversion  to  clear 
analytical  thought  ("  Above  all,"  he  boasts,  "I  never  thought 
about  thinking")  and  his  habit  of  poetic  allegory  and  apriorism. 
Where  he  himself  doubted  and  denied  current  creeds,  as  in  his 
work  in  natural  science,  he  was  most  fruitful  (though  he  was 
not  always  right — e.g.,  his  polemic  against  Newton's  theory  of 
colour)  ;  and  the  permanently  interesting  teaching  of  his  Faust 
is  precisely  that  which  artistically  utters  the  doubt  through 
which  he  passed  to  a  pantheistic  Naturalism. 

i8.  No  less  certain  is  the  unbelief  of  Schiller  (1759- 
1805),  whom  Hagenbach  even  takes  as  "  the  represen- 
tative of  the  rationalism  of  his  age."  In  his  juvenile 
Robbers,  indeed,  he  makes  his  worst  villains  free- 
thinkers ;  and  in  the  preface  he  stoutly  champions 
religion  against  all  assailants;  but  hardly  ever  after  that 
piece  does  he  give  a  favourable  portrait  of  a  priest.'  He 
himself  soon  joined  the  Aufkldrung ;  and  all  his 
aesthetic  appreciation  of  Christianity  never  carried  him 
beyond  the  position  that  it  virtually  had  the  tendency 
(Anlage)  to  the  highest  and  noblest,  though  that  was 
in  general  tastelessly  and  repulsively  represented  by 
Christians.  He  added  that  in  a  certain  sense  it  is  the 
only  aesthetic  religion,  whence  it  is  that  it  gives  such 
pleasure  to  the  feminine  nature,  and  that  only  among 
women  is  it  to  be  met  with  in  a  tolerable  form.^  Like 
Goethe,  he  sought  to  reduce  the  Biblical  supernatural 
to  the  plane  of  possibility, ^  in  the  manner  of  the  liberal 
theologians  of  the  period  ;  and  like  him  he  often  writes 
as  a  deist, "^  though  professedly  for  a  time  a  Kantist. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  say  that  a 
healthy    nature    (which    Goethe    had    said    needed    no 

'  Remarked  by  Hagenbach,  trans,  p.  238. 

^  Letter  to  Goethe,  August   17th,  1795  (Brie/kvechsel,  No.   87).     The 
passage  is  given  in  Carlyle's  essay  on  Schiller. 

3  In  Die  Sendu?ig  Moses.  *  See  the  PhilosophiscJie  Briefe. 


GERMANY  293 


Morality,  no  Natiir-recht,'^  and  no  political  metaphysic) 
required  neither  Deity  nor  Immortality  to  sustain  it."" 

19.  The  critical  philosophy  of  Kant  may  be  said  to 
represent  most  comprehensively  the  outcome  in  German 
intelligence  of  the  higher  freethought  of  the  age,  in  so  far 
as  its  results  could  be  at  all  widely  assimilated.  In  its 
most  truly  critical  part,  the  analytic  treatment  of  previous 
theistic  systems  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  (1781), 
he  is  fundamentally  anti-theological  ;  the  effect  of  the 
argument  being  to  negate  all  previously  current  proofs 
of  the  existence  and  cognisableness  of  a  "  supreme 
power "  or  deity.  Already  the  metaphysics  of  the 
Leibnitz- Wolff  school  were  discredited  ;^  and  so  far  Kant 
could  count  on  a  fair  hearing  for  a  system  which  rejected 
that  of  the  schools.  Certainly  he  meant  his  book  to 
be  an  antidote  to  the  prevailing  religious  credulity. 
"  Henceforth  there  were  to  be  no  more  dreams  of  ghost- 
seers,  metaphysicians,  and  enthusiasts."^  On  his  own 
part,  however,  no  doubt  in  sympathy  with  the  attitude 
of  many  of  his  readers,  there  followed  a  species  of 
intuitional  reaction  ;  and  in  the  Critique  of  Practical 
Reason  (1788)  he  makes  an  almost  avowedly  unscientific 
attempt  to  restore  the  reign  of  theism  on  a  basis  of  a 
mere  emotional  and  ethical  necessity  assumed  to  exist  in 
human  nature — a  necessity  which  he  never  even  attempts 
to  demonstrate.  With  the  magic  wand  of  the  Practical 
Reason,  as  Heine  has  it,  be  reanimated  the  corpse  of 
theism,   which    the    Theoretic    Reason    had    slain. s     In 

'  Carlyle  translates,  "  No  Rights  of  Man,"  which  was  probably  the 
implication. 

=  Letter  to  Goethe,  July  gth,  1706  {Briefivechsel,  No.  188).  "It  is 
evident  that  he  was  estrang-ed  not  only  from  the  church  but  from  the 
fundamental  truths  of  Christianity  "  (Rev.  W.  Baur,  Religious  Life  of 
Gerniajiv,  Eng.  trans.  1872,  p.  22). 

3  Cp.  Tieftrunk,  as  cited  by  Stuckenberg,  Life  of  Liuitantiel  Kant, 
1882,  p.  225. 

'  Id.  p.  376. 

5  For  an  able  argument  vindicating  the  unity  of  Kant's  system,  how- 
ever, see  Professor  Adamson,  The  Philosophy  of  Kant,  1879,  p.  21  sq.  as 
against  Lange.  With  the  verdict  in  the  text  compare  that  of  Heine, 
Zur  Gesch.  der  Relig.  u.  Philos.  in  Deiitschland,  B.  iii  (  Werke,  as  cited, 
iii,  81-82),  and  that  of  Professor  G.  Santayana,  The  Life  of  Reason, 
vol.  i,  1905,  p.  94  sq. 


294  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


this  adjustment  he  was  perhaps  consciously  copying- 
Rousseau,  who  had  greatly  influenced  him/  and  whose 
theism  is  an  avowedly  subjectivist  predication.  But  the 
same  attitude  to  the  problem  had  been  substantially 
adopted  by  Lessing  /  and  indeed  the  process  is  at 
bottom  identical  with  that  of  the  quasi-skeptics,  Pascal, 
Huet,  Berkeley,  and  the  rest,  who  at  once  impugn  and 
employ  the  rational  process,  reasoning  that  reason  is  not 
reasonable.  Kant  did  but  set  up  the  "practical"  against 
the  "pure"  reason,  as  other theists  before  him  had  setup 
faith  against  science,  or  the  "  heart"  against  the  "head," 
and  as  theists  to-day  exalt  the  "  will  "  against  "  know- 
ledge," the  emotional  nature  against  the  logical.  It  is 
tolerably  clear  that  Kant's  motive  at  this  stage  was  an 
unphilosophic  fear  that  Naturalism  would  work  moral 
harm^ — a  fear  shared  by  him  with  the  mass  of  the 
average  minds  of  his  age. 

The  process  of  Kant's  adjustment  of  his  philosophy  to  social 
needs  as  he  regarded  them  is  to  be  understood  by  following 
the  chronology  and  the  vogue  of  his  writings.  The  first  edition 
of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  "excited  little  attention" 
(Stuckenberg,  The  Life  of  Immamtel  Kant,  1882,  p.  368)  ;  but 
in  1787  appeared  the  second  and  modified  edition,  with  a  new 
preface,  clearly  written  with  a  propitiatory  eye  to  the  orthodox 
reaction.  "  All  at  once  the  work  now  became  popular,  and  the 
praise  was  as  loud  and  as  fulsome  as  at  first  the  silence  had 
been  profound.  The  literature  of  the  day  began  to  teem  with 
Kantian   ideas,  with   discussions   of  the    new   philosophy,   and 

with  the  praises  of  its  author High  officials  in  Berlin  would 

lay  aside  the  weighty  affairs  of  State  to  consider  the  Kritik,  and 
among  them  were  found  warm  admirers  of  the  work  and  its 
author."  Id.  p.  369.  Cp.  Heine,  Rel.  nnd  Phil,  in  Deutsch- 
land,  B.  w—Werke,  iii,  75,  82. 

This  popularity  becomes  intelligible  in  the  light  of  the  new 
edition  and  its  preface.  To  say  nothing  of  the  alterations  in 
the  text,  pronounced  by  Schopenhauer  to  be  cowardly  accom- 
modations (as  to  which  question  see  Adamson,  as  cited,  and 
Stuckenberg,  p.  461,  note  94),  Kant  writes  in  the  preface  that 

'  Stuckenberg-,  pp.  225,  332. 

=  Cp.  Haym's  Herder  nach  seinem  Lchen dnrgestellt,  1877,  i,  33,48; 

Kronenberg,  Herder's  Philosophie,  1889,  p.  10. 
3  Cp.  Hagenbach,  Eng.  trans,  p.  223. 


GERMANY  295 


he  had  been  "obliged  to  destroy  knowledge  in  order  to  make 
room  for  faith";  and,  again,  that  "  only  through  criticism  can 
the  roots  be  cut  of  materialism,  fatalism,  atheism,  freethinking 
unbelief  ( freigeisterischen  UngJaubeti),  fanaticism  and  super- 
stition, which  may  become  universally  injurious  ;  also  of 
idealism  and  scepticism,  which  are  dangerous  rather  to  the 
Schools,  and  can  hardly  reach  the  general  public."  (Meikle- 
john  mistranslates:  "which  are  universally  injurious  " — Bohn 
ed.  p.  xxxvii.)  This  passage  virtually  puts  the  popular  religion 
and  all  philosophies  save  Kant's  own  on  one  level  of  moral 
dubiety.  It  is,  however,  distinctly  uncandid  as  regards  the 
"  freethinking  unbelief,"  for  Kant  himself  was  certainly  an 
unbeliever  in  Christian  miracles  and  dogmas.  His  want  of 
philosophic  candour,  or  at  least  his  readiness  to  make  an 
appeal  to  prejudice,  again  appears  in  the  second  Critique  when 
he  asks  :  "  Whence  does  the  freethinker  derive  his  knowledge 
that  there  is,  for  instance,  no  Supreme  Being?"  {Kritik  der 
reinen  Vemunft,  Transc.  Methodenlehre,  i  H.  2  Absch.,  ed. 
Kirchmann,  1879,  p.  587  ;  Bohn  trans,  p.  458.)  He  had  just 
before  professed  to  be  dealing  with  denial  of  the  "existence  of 
God  " — a  proposition  of  no  significance  whatever  unless  "  God" 
be  defined.  He  now  without  warning  substitutes  the  undefined 
expression  "Supreme  Being"  for  "God,"  thus  imputing  a 
proposition  probably  never  sustained  with  clear  verbal  purpose 
by  any  human  being.  Either,  then,  Kant's  ovi'n  proposition 
was  the  entirely  vacuous  one  that  nobody  can  demonstrate  the 
impossibility  of  an  alleged  undefined  existence,  or  he  was 
virtually  asserting  that  no  one  can  disprove  any  alleged  super- 
natural existence — witch,  demon,  Moloch,  Krishna,  Bel,  Siva, 
Aphrodite,  or  Isis  and  Osiris.  In  the  latter  case  he  would  be 
absolutely  stultifying  his  own  claim  to  cut  the  roots  of  "  super- 
stition "  and  "fanaticism"  as  well  as  of  freethinking  and 
materialism  ;  for,  if  the  freethinker  cannot  disprove  Jehovah, 
neither  can  the  Kantist  disprove  Allah  and  Satan  ;  and  Kant 
had  no  basis  for  denying,  as  he  did  with  Spinoza,  the  existence 
of  ghosts  or  spirits.  From  this  dilemma  Kant's  argument 
cannot  be  delivered.  And  as  he  finally  introduces  Deity  as  a 
psychologically  and  morally  necessary  regulative  idea,  howbeit 
indemonstrable,  he  leaves  every  species  of  superstition  exactly 
where  it  stood  before — every  superstition  being  practically  held, 
as  against  "  freethinking  unbelief,"  on  just  such  a  tenure. 

Concerning  the  age-long  opposition  between  rationalism 
[Versfajidesaufkliirung')  and  intuitionism  or  emotionalism 
(Gefiihhphilosophie),  it  is  claimed  by  modern  transcendentalists 
that  Kant,  or  Herder,  or  another,  has  effected  a  solution  on  a 
plane  higher  than  either.  {E.g.,  }s.ronenh&rg_,  Herder's  Philo- 
sophie  nach    ihrem  Entwickelungsgang  und   Hirer  historischen 


296  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


Stellung,  1889,  p.  6.)  The  true  solution  certainly  must  account 
for  both  points  of  view  ;  but  no  solution  is  really  attained  by 
either  of  these  writers.  Kant  alternately  stood  at  the  two 
positions  ;  and  his  unhistorical  mind  did  not  seek  to  unify  them 
in  a  study  of  human  evolution.  Herder,  recognisant  of  evolu- 
tion, would  not  follow  out  any  rational  analysis. 

All  the  while,  however,  Kant's  theism  was  radically 
irreconcilable  with  the  prevailing  religion.  As  appears 
from  his  cordial  hostility  to  the  belief  in  ghosts,  he  really 
lacked  the  religious  temperament.  "  He  himself,"  says 
a  recent  biographer,  "was  too  suspicious  of  the  emotions 
to  desire  to  inspire  any  enthusiasm  with  reference  to  his 
own  heart.'"  This  misstates  the  fact  that  his  "Practical 
Reason  "  was  but  an  abstraction  of  his  own  emotional 
predilection  ;  but  it  remains  true  that  that  predilection 
was  nearly  free  from  the  commoner  forms  of  pious 
psychosis ;  and  typical  Christians  have  never  found 
him  satisfactory.  "  From  my  heart,"  writes  one  of  his 
first  biographers,  "  I  wish  that  Kant  had  not  regarded 
the  Christian  religion  merely  as  a  necessity  for  the 
State,  or  as  an  institution  to  be  tolerated  for  the  sake  of 
the  weak  (which  now  so  many,  following  his  example, 
do  even  in  the  pulpit),  but  had  known  that  which  is 
positive,  improving,  and  blessed  in  Christianity."-  He 
had  in  fact  never  kept  up  any  theological  study  ;3 
and  his  plan  of  compromise  had  thus,  like  those  of 
Spencer  and  Mill  in  a  later  day,  a  fatal  unreality 
for  all  men  who  have  discarded  theology  with  a 
full  knowledge  of  its  structure,  though  it  appeals 
very  conveniently  to  those  disposed  to  retain  it  as  a 
means  of  popular  influence.  All  his  adaptations, 
therefore,  failed  to  conciliate  the  mass  of  the  orthodox  ; 
and  even  after  the  issue  of  the  second  Critique  he  had 
been  the  subject  of  discussion  among  the  reactionists."^ 
But  that  Critique^  and  the  preface  to  the  second  edition 
of  the  first,  were  at  bottom  only  pleas  for  a  revised  ethic, 

'  Stuckenberg-,  Life  of  Immanuel  Kant,  p.  329. 

^  Borowski,  Darstellung  des  Lebens  u?id  Charakters  Immatiuel  Kant's, 
1804,  cited  by  Stuckenberg-,  p.  357. 
3  Stuckenberg,  pp.  359-60.  ■*  Id,  p.  361. 


GERMANY  297 


Kant's  concern  with  current  religion  being  solely  ethical ; 
and  the  force  of  that  concern  led  him  at  length,  in  what 
was  schemed  as  a  series  of  magazine  articles,'  to 
expound  his  notion  of  religion  in  relation  to  morals. 
When  he  did  so  he  aroused  a  resentment  much  more 
energetic  than  that  felt  by  the  older  academics  against 
his  philosophy.  The  title  of  his  treatise  on  Religion 
within  the  Boundaries  of  Mere  Reason^  (1792-94)  is 
obviously  framed  to  parry  criticism  ;  yet  so  drastic  is 
its  treatment  of  its  problems  that  the  College  of  Censors 
at  Berlin  under  the  new  theological  regime  vetoed  the 
second  part.  By  the  terms  of  the  law  as  to  the  censor- 
ship, the  publisher  was  entitled  to  know  the  reason  for 
the  decision  ;  but  on  his  asking  for  it  he  was  informed 
that  "  another  instruction  was  on  hand,  which  the 
censor  followed  as  his  law,  but  whose  contents  he 
refused  to  make  known. "^  Greatly  incensed,  Kant 
submitted  the  rejected  article  with  the  rest  of  his  book  to 
the  theological  faculty  of  hisown  university  of  Konigsberg, 
asking  them  to  decide  in  which  faculty  the  censorship 
was  properly  vested.  They  referred  the  decision  to  the 
philosophical  faculty,  which  duly  proceeded  to  license 
the  book  (1793).  As  completed,  it  contained  an  article 
markedly  hostile  to  the  church.  His  opponents  in  turn 
were  now  so  enraged  that  they  procured  a  royal  cabinet 
order  (October,  1794)  charging  him  with  "distorting  and 
degrading  many  of  the  chief  and  fundamental  doctrines 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  of  Christianity,"  and  ordering 
all  the  instructors  at  the  university  not  to  lecture  on  the 
book.^  Such  was  the  reward  for  a  capitulation  of  philo- 
sophy to  the  philosophic  ideals  of  the  police. 

Kant,  called  upon  to  render  an  account  of  his  conduct 
to  the  Government,  formally  defended  it,  but  in  conclu- 
sion decorously  said  :  "  I  think  it  safest,  in  order  to 
obviate    the    least   suspicion     in    this    respect,    as    your 

'  The  first,  on  "  Radical  Evils,"  appeared  in  a  Berlin  monthly  in  April, 
1792,  and  was  then  reprinted  separately. 

-  Religion  innerhalb  der  Greyiseti  der  blossen  Vernunft. 

3  Stuckenbergf,  p.  361. 

■♦  Ueberweg-,  ii,  141  ;  Stuckenberg-,  p.  363. 


298  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


Royal  Majesty's  most  faithful  subject,  to  declare 
solemnly  that  henceforth  I  will  refrain  altogether  from 
all  public  discussion  of  religion,  whether  natural  or 
revealed,  both  in  lectures  and  in  writings."  After  the 
death  of  Frederick  William,  Kant  held  himself  free  to 
speak  out  again,  and  published  (1798)  an  essay  on  "  The 
Strife  of  the  [University]  Faculties,"  wherein  he  argued 
that  philosophers  should  be  free  to  discuss  all  ques- 
tions of  religion  so  long  as  they  did  not  handle  Biblical 
theology  as  such.  The  belated  protest,  however,  led  to 
nothing.  By  this  time  the  philosopher  was  incapable  of 
further  efficient  work  ;  and  when  he  died  in  1804  the 
chief  manuscript  he  left,  planned  as  a  synthesis  of  his 
philosophic    teaching,    was    found     to     be    hopelessly 

confused.' 

The  attitude  in  which  Kant  stood  to  the  reigning 
religion  in  his  latter  years  was  thus  substantially  hostile. 
Religion  was  for  him  essentially  ethic  ;  and  there  is  no 
reconciling  the  process  of  propitiation  of  deity,  in  the 
Christian  or  any  other  cult,  with  his  express  declaration 
that  all  attempts  to  win  God's  favour  save  by  simple 
right-living  are  sheer  fetichism.-  He  thus  ends  practi- 
cally at  the  point  of  view  of  the  deists,  whose  influence 
on  him  in  early  life  is  seen  in  his  work  on  cosmogony. ^ 
He  had,  moreover,  long  ceased  to  go  to  church  or 
follow  any  religious  usage,  even  refusing  to  attend  the 
services  on  the  installation  of  a  new  university  rector, 
save  when  he  himself  held  the  office.  "  He  did  not  like 
the  singing  in  the  churches,  and  pronounced  it  mere 
bawling.  In  prayer,  whether  public  or  private,  he  had 
not  the  least  faith  ;  and  in  his  conversation  as  well  as 
his  writings  he  treated  it  as  a  superstition,  holding  that 
to  address  anything  unseen  would  open  the  way  for 
fanaticism.  Not  only  did  he  argue  against  prayer  :  he 
also  ridiculed  it,  and  declared  that  a  man  would  be 
ashamed    to    be    caught    by  another   in  the  attitude    of 

'  Stuckenberg,  pp.  304-9. 

-  Religion  innerhnlh  der  Grenzen  der  hlosscn  Vcniunff,  B.  iv,  c.  2. 

3  Cp.  Stuckenberg-,  p.  332. 


GERMANY  299 


prayer."  One  of  his  maxims  was  that  "To  kneel  or 
prostrate  himself  on  the  earth,  even  for  the  purpose  of 
symbolising  to  himself  reverence  for  a  heavenly  object, 
is  unworthy  of  man."'  So  too  he  held  that  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  had  no  practical  value,  and  had  a  "  low 
opinion  "  of  the  Old  Testament. 

Yet  his  effort  at  compromise  had  carried  him  to 
positions  which  are  the  negation  of  some  of  his  own 
most  emphatic  ethical  teachings.  While  he  carries  his 
"categorical  imperative,"  or  a  priori  conception  of  duty, 
so  extravagantly  far  as  to  argue  that  it  is  wrong  even 
to  tell  a  falsehood  to  a  would-be  murderer  in  order  to 
mislead  him,  he  approves  of  the  systematic  employment 
of  the  pulpit  function  by  men  who  do  not  believe  in  the 
creed  they  there  expound.  The  priest,  with  Kant's 
encouragement,  is  to  "  draw  all  the  practical  lessons  for 
his  congregation  from  dogmas  which  he  himself  cannot 
subscribe  with  a  full  conviction  of  their  truth,  but  which 
he  can  teach,  since  it  is  not  altogether  impossible  that 
truth  maybe  concealed  therein,"  while  he  remains  free 
as  a  scholar  to  write  in  a  contrary  sense  in  his  own  name. 
And  this  doctrine,  set  forth  in  the  censured  work  of  1793, 
is  repeated  in  the  moralist's  last  treatise  (1798),  w^herein 
he  explains  that  the  preacher,  when  speaking  doctrinally, 
"  can  put  into  the  passage  under  consideration  his  own 
rational  views,  whether  found  there  or  not."  Kant  thus 
ended  by  reviving  for  the  convenience  of  churchmen 
the  medieval  principle  of  a  "twofold  truth."  So  little 
efficacy  is  there  in  a  transcendental  ethic  for  any  of  the 
actual  emergencies  of  life. 

On  this  question  compare  Kant's  Religion  innerhalb  der 
Grensen  der  blossen  Vernunft,  B.  iii,  Apotome  i,  Sect.  6  ;  B.  iv, 
Apot.  ii,  preamble  and  Sect,  i,  3  and  4  ;  with  the  essay  in  reply 
to  Constant  in  App.  to  Rosenkranz's  ed.  of  Werke,  vii,  295 — 
given  by  T.  K.  Abbott  in  his  trans,  of  the  Critique  of  Jtcdgment. 
See  also  Stuckenberg-,  pp.  341-5,  and  the  general  comment  of 
Baur,  Kirchengeschichte  des  igten  Jahrhtaiderts,  1862,  p.  65. 
"  Kant's     recognition    of    Scripture    is     purely    a    matter    of 

'  Stuckenberg:,  pp.  340,  346,  354,  468. 


300  MODERN  E  UROPEA  N  FREETHO  UGHT 

expedience.  The  State  needs  the  Bible  to  control  the  people  ; 
the  masses  need  it  in  order  that  they,  having-  weak  consciences, 
may  recognise  their  duty  ;  and  the  philosopher  finds  it  a  conve- 
nient vehicle  for  conveying-  to  the  people  the  faith  of  reason. 
Were  it  rejected  it  might  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  put 
In  its  place  another  book  which  would  inspire  as  much  confi- 
dence." All  the  while  "  Kant's  principles  of  course  led  him  to 
deny  that  the  Bible  is  authoritative  in   matters  of  religion,  or 

that  it  is  of  itself  a  safe  guide  in  morals Its  value  consists 

in  the  fact  that,  owing  to  the  confidence  of  the  people  in  it, 
reason  can  use  it  to  interpret  into  Scripture  its  own  doctrines, 
and  can  thus  make  it  the  means  of  popularising-  rational  faith. 
If  anyone  imagines  that  the  aim  of  the  interpretation  is  to 
obtain  the  real  meaning-  of  Scripture,  he  is  no  Kantian  on  this 
point"  (Stuckenberg-,  p.  341). 

20.  The  total  performance  of  Kant  thus  left  Germany 
with  a  powerful  lead  on  the  one  hand  towards  that 
unbelief  in  religion  which  in  the  last  reign  had  been 
fashionable,  and  on  the  other  hand  a  series  of  prescrip- 
tions for  compromise  ;  the  monarchy  all  the  while 
throwing  its  weight  against  all  innovation  in  doctrine 
and  practice.  In  1799  Fichte  is  found  expressing  the 
utmost  alarm  at  the  combination  of  the  European 
despotisms  to  "  root  out  freethought  "  ; '  and  so  strong 
did  the  official  reaction  become  that  in  the  opinion  of 
Heine  all  the  German  philosophers  and  their  ideas 
would  have  been  suppressed  by  wheel  and  gallows  but 
for  Napoleon,^  who  intervened  in  the  year  1805.  The 
Prussian  despotism  being  thus  weakened,  what  actually 
happened  was  an  adaptation  of  Kant's  teaching  to  the 
needs  alike  of  religion  and  of  rationalism.  The  religious 
world  was  assured  by  it  that,  though  all  previous  argu- 
ments for  theism  were  philosophically  worthless,  theism 
was  now  safe  on  the  fluid  basis  of  feeling.  On  the  other 
hand,  rationalism  alike  in  ethics  and  in  historical 
criticism  was  visibly  reinforced  on  all  sides.  Herder, 
as  before  noted,  found  divinity  students  grounding  their 
unbelief     on     Kant's    teaching.     Stalidlin    begins    the 

'  Letter  of  May  22nd,  1799,  reproduced  by  Heine. 

-  Zur  Gesch.  der  Rel.  u.  Philos.  in  Deutschland,       Werke,  as  cited,  iii, 
96,  98. 


GERMANY  301 


preface  to  his  History  and  Spirit  of  Skepticism  (1794) 
with  the  remark  that  *'  Skepticism  begins  to  be  a  disease 
of  the  age  "  ;  and  Kant  is  the  last  in  his  list  of  skeptics. 
At  the  close  of  the  century  "  the  number  of  Kantian 
theologians  was  legion,"  and  it  was  through  the  Kantian 
influence  that  "the  various  anti-orthodox  tendencies 
which  flourished  during  the  period  of  Illumination  were 
concentrated  in  Rationalism'"- — in  the  tendency,  that 
is,  to  bring  rational  criticism  to  bear  alike  on  history, 
dogma,  and  philosophy.  Borowski  in  1804  complains 
that  "  beardless  youths  and  idle  babblers "  devoid  of 
knowledge  "  appeal  to  Kant's  views  respecting  Chris- 
tianity."'' These  views  were  partly  accommodating, 
partly  subversive  in  the  extreme.  Kant  regards  Jesus 
as  an  edifying  ideal  of  perfect  manhood,  "belief"  in 
whom  as  such  makes  a  man  acceptable  to  God,  because 
of  following  a  good  model.  "  While  he  thus  treats  the 
historical  account  of  Jesus  as  of  no  significance,  except 
as  a  shell  into  which  the  practical  reason  puts  the  kernel, 
his  whole  argument  tends  to  destroy  faith  in  the  historic 
person  of  Jesus  as  given  in  the  Gospel,  treating  the 
account  itself  as  something  whose  truthfulness  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  investigate. "^  In  point  of  fact  we  find  his 
devoted  disciple  Erhard  declaring  :  "  I  regard  Christian 
morality  as  something  which  has  been  falsely  imputed 
to  Christianity  ;  and  the  existence  of  Christ  does  not 
at  all  seem  to  me  to  be  a  probable  historical  fact " — this 
while  declaring  that  Kant  had  given  him  "the  indescrib- 
able comfort  of  being  able  to  call  himself  openly,  and 
with  a  good  conscience,  a  Christian. "  + 

While  therefore  a  multitude  of  preachers  availed 
themselves  of  Kant's  philosophic  license  to  rationalise 
in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it  as  occasion  offered,  and  yet 

'  Stuckenberg-,  p.  311. 

=  Id.  p.  357. 

3  Stuckenberg-,  p.  351.  "  It  is  only  necessary,"  adds  Dr.  Stucken- 
berg (p.  468,  note  142),  "to develop  Kant's  hints  in  order  to  get  the  views 
of  Strauss  in  his  Lebeit  Jestt." 

*  Id.  p.  375.  Erhard  also  stated  that  Pestalozzi  shared  his  views  on 
the  ethics  of  Christianity. 


302  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

Others  opposed  them  only  on  the  score  that  all  diver- 
gence from  orthodoxy  should  be  avowed,  the  dissolution 
of  orthodoxy  in  Germany  was  rapid  and  general  ;  and 
the  anti-supernaturalist  handling  of  Scripture,  prepared 
for  as  we  have  seen,  went  on  continuously.  Even  the 
positive  disparagement  of  Christianity  was  carried  on  by 
Kantian  students;  and  Hamann,  dubbed  "the  Magician 
of  the  North  "  for  his  alluring  exposition  of  emotional 
theism,  caused  one  of  them,  a  tutor,  to  be  brought  before 
a  clerical  consistory  for  having  taught  his  pupil  to  throw 
all  specifically  Christian  doctrines  aside.  The  tutor 
admitted  the  charge,  and  with  four  others  signed  a 
declaration  "  that  neither  morality  nor  sound  reason 
nor  public  welfare  could  exist  in  connection  with 
Christianity."' 

21.  Against  the  intellectual  influence  thus  set  up  there 
was  none  in  contemporary  Germany  capable  of  resis- 
tance. Philosophy  for  the  most  part  went  in  Kant's 
direction,  having  indeed  been  so  tending  before  his  day. 
Rationalism  of  a  kind  had  already  had  a  representative 
in  Crusius  (17 12-1775),  v/ho  in  treatises  on  logic  and 
metaphysics  opposed  alike  Leibnitz  and  Wolff,  and 
taught  for  his  own  part  a  kind  of  Epicureanism, 
nominally  Christianised.  To  his  school  belonged 
Platner  (much  admired  by  Jean  Paul  Richter,  his 
pupil)  and  Tetens,  "  the  German  Locke,"  who  attempted 
a  common-sense  answer  to  Hume.  His  ideal  was  a 
philosophy  "  at  once  intelligible  and  religious,  agreeable 
to  God  and  accessible  to  the  people."-  Platner  on  the 
other  hand,  leaning  strongly  towards  a  psychological 
and  anthropological  view  of  human  problems, ^  opposed 
alike  to  atheism*  and   to    Kantian   theism^  a  moderate 

'  Stuckenberg-,  p.  358. 

^  Bartholm^ss,  Hist.  crit.  des  doctr.  relig.  de  la  philos.  inoderne,  1855, 
i,  136-140. 

3  In  demanding:  a  "history  of  the  human  conscience"  {Neue  Anthro- 
pologies, 1790)  Platner  seems  to  have  anticipated  the  modern  scientific 
approach  to  relig'ion. 

■*  Gesprdche  iiber  den  Atheis?nus,  1781. 

3  Lehrbuch  der  Logik  nnd  Metaphysik,  lyg^. 


GERMANY  303 


Pyrrhonic  skepticism  ;  here  following  a  remarkable  lead 
from  the  younger  Beausobre,  who  in  1755  had  published 
in  French,  at  Berlin,  a  treatise  entitled  Le  Pyrrhonisme 
Raisonnable,  taking  up  the  position,  among  others, 
that  while  it  is  hard  to  prove  the  existence  of  God  by 
reason  it  is  impossible  to  disprove  it.  This  was 
virtually  the  position  of  Kant  a  generation  later  ;  and 
it  is  clear  that  thus  early  the  dogmatic  position  was 
discredited. 

Some  philosophic  opposition  there  was  to  Kant,  alike 
on  intuitionist  grounds,  as  in  the  cases  of  Hamann  and 
Herder,  and  on  grounds  of  academic  prejudice,  as  in  the 
case  of  Kraus  ;  but  the  more  important  thinkers  who 
followed  him  were  all  as  heterodox  as  he.  In  particular, 
Fichte,  who  began  by  being  a  Kantian  zealot,  gave  even 
greater  scandal  than  the  Master  had  done.  Passing 
rapidly,  under  Spinoza's  influence,  to  pantheism,  he 
rejected  Kant's  anti-rational  ground  for  affirming  a  God 
not  immanent  in  things,  and  claimed,  as  did  his  con- 
temporaries Schelling  and  Hegel,  to  establish  theism  on 
rational  grounds.  Rejecting  Kant's  reiterated  doctrine 
that  religion  is  ethic,  Fichte  ultimately  insisted  that,  on 
the  contrary,  religion  is  knowledge,  and  that  "  it  is  only 
a  corrupt  society  that  has  to  use  religion  as  an  impulse 
to  moral  action."  But  alike  in  his  Kantian  youth  and 
later,  he  was  definitely  anti-revelationist.  In  his 
Essay  towards  a  Critique  of  all  Revelation,  published 
with  some  difficulty,  Kant  helping  (1792),  he  in  effect 
negates  the  orthodox  assumption,  and,  in  the  spirit  of 
Kant  and  Lessing,  but  with  more  directness  than  they 
had  shown,  concludes  that  belief  in  revelation  "is  an 
element,  and  an  important  element,  in  the  moral 
education  of  humanity,  but  it  is  not  a  final  stage  for 
human  thought.'"  In  Kant's  fashion,  he  had  professed^ 
to  "silence  the  opponents  of  positive  religion  not  less 
than  its  dogmatical  defenders";  but  that  result  did  not 


^i=>' 


'   Professor  Adainson,  Fichte,  18S1,  \^.  t,2\  W.  Smiih,  Memoir  of  Fichte, 
2nd  ed.  pp.  64-65. 

-  Letter  to  Kant,  cited  by  Smith,  p.  63. 


304  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

follow  on  either  side  ;  and  ere  long  he  was  figuring  as 
one  of  the  most  aggressive  of  the  opponents. 

It  does  not  appear  to  be  true  that  he  ever  told  his 
students  at  Jena  :  "  In  five  years  there  will  be  no  more 
Christian  religion  :  reason  is  our  religion ";'  and  the 
charges  alike  of  subverting  Christianity  and  of  teaching 
atheism,  brought  against  him  soon  after  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  Jena  chair,  seem  to  have  been  unjustified  at 
that  time.^  On  the  provocation  given,  however,  by  his 
lecturing  on  Sunday  to  his  students,  those  charges  were 
furiously  pressed  against  him  ;  opinion  running  so  high 
that  he  was  personally  maltreated,  and  his  wife  insulted 
in  the  streets.  Leaving  Jena,  despite  an  official  vindi- 
cation, he  found  harbourage  at  Berlin,  Erlangen,  and 
Konigsberg ;  but  his  philosophy  was  in  no  way 
modified,  becoming  more  definitely  pantheistic  and 
non-Christian  as  it  developed. ^  Thus  Fichte's  final 
pantheism  is  even  more  fundamentally  atheistic  than 
that  of  Spinoza.  In  one  of  his  minor  essays^  he  says  in 
so  many  words  that  "  the  living  and  active  moral  order 
is  itself  God  :  we  need  no  other  God,  and  can  make  no 
other."  And  that  he  was  conscious  of  a  vital  sunder- 
ance  between  his  thought  and  that  of  the  past  is  made 
clear  by  his  answer,  in  1805,  to  the  complaint  that  the 
people  had  lost  their  "  religious  feeling  "  {Religiositdt). 
His  retort  is  that  a  new  religious  feeling  has  taken  the 
place  of  the  old  ;s  and  that  was  the  position  taken  up  by 
the  generation  which  swore  by  him,  in  the  German 
manner,  as  the  last  had  sworn  by  Kant. 

But  the  successive  philosophies  of  Kant,  Fichte, 
Schelling,  and  Hegel,  all  rising  out  of  the  "  Illumi- 
nation "    of    the  eighteenth  century,    have    been    alike 

'  Asserted  by  Stuckenberg-,  Life  of  Kant ,  p.  386. 

=  Cp.  Robins,  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862,  Pt.  i,  pp.  132-3;  Professor 
Adamson,  Fichte,  pp.  50-67  ;  W.  Smith,  Memoir  of  Fichte,  pp.  106-7. 

3  Compare  the  complaints  of  Hurst,  Hist,  of  Rationalism,  3rd  ed. 
pp.  136-7. 

^  Summarised  by  Baur,  Kirchengeschichte  des  igten  Jahrh.  pp.  66-67. 
Heine  insists  that  Fichte's  Idealism  is  "  more  Godless  than  the  crassest 
Materialism  "  (as  last  cited,  p.  75). 

s  Grundziige  des  gegenwdrtigen  Zeitalters,  1805-6,  i6te  Vorlesung. 


GERMANY  305 


impermanent.  Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in  the 
history  of  thought  than  the  internecine  strife  of  the 
systems  which  insisted  on  "  putting  something  in  the 
place "  of  the  untenable  systems  of  the  past.  They 
have  been  but  so  many  "  toppling  spires  of  cloud." 
Fichte,  like  Herder,  broke  away  from  the  doctrine  of 
Kant ;  and  later  became  bitterly  opposed  to  that  of  his 
former  friend  Schelling,  as  did  Hegel  in  his  turn. 
Schleiermacher,  hostile  to  Kant,  was  still  more  hostile 
to  Fichte  ;  and  Hegel,  developing  Fichte,  gave  rise 
to  schools  arrayed  against  each  other.  All  that  is 
permanent  in  the  product  of  the  age  of  German 
Rationalism  is  the  fundamental  principle  upon  which 
it  proceeded,  the  confutation  of  the  dogmas  and  legends 
of  the  past,  and  the  concrete  results  of  the  historical, 
critical,  and  physical  research  to  which  the  principle  and 
the  confutation  led. 

The  emancipation,  too,  was  but  partial  in  the  German- 
speaking  world.  In  Austria,  despite  a  certain  amount 
of  French  culture,  the  rule  of  the  Jesuits  in  the 
eighteenth  century  was  too  effective  to  permit  of  any 
intellectual  developments.  Maria  Theresa,  who  knew 
too  well  that  the  boundless  sexual  licence  against  which 
she  fought  had  nothing  to  do  with  innovating  ideas,  had 
to  issue  a  special  order  to  permit  the  importation  of 
Montesquieu's  Esprit  des  Lois ;  and  works  of  more 
subversive  doctrine  could  not  openly  pass  the  frontiers 
at  all.  An  attempt  to  bring  Lessing  to  Vienna  in  1774, 
with  a  view  to  founding  a  new  literary  Academy, 
collapsed  before  the  opposition  ;  and  when  Professor 
Jahn,  of  the  Vienna  University — described  as  "  free- 
thinking,  latitudinarian,  supernaturalistic  " — developed 
somewhat  anti-clerical  tendencies  in  his  teaching  and 
writing,  he  was  forced  to  resign,  and  died  a  simple 
Canon.'  "Austria,  in  a  time  of  universal  effervescence, 
produced  only  musicians,  and  showed  zest  only  for 
pleasure."-     Yet    among    the    music-makers    was    the 

'  Kurtz,  Hist,  of  the  Chr.  Church,  Eng.  trans.  1864,  ii,  225. 
^  A.  Sorel,  L' Europe  et  la  revolution  frangaise,  i  (1885),  p.  458. 
VOL.    II  X 


3o6  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

German-born  Beethoven,  the  greatest  master  of  his 
age.  Kindred  in  spirit  to  Goethe,  and  much  more  of  a 
revolutionist  than  he  in  all  things,  Beethoven  spent  the 
creative  part  of  his  life  at  Vienna  without  ceasing  to  be  a 
freethinker.' 

§   III.   The  remaining  Eit-ropean  States. 

I.  Traces  of  new  rationalistic  life  are  to  be  seen  in 
the  Scandinavian  countries  at  least  as  early  as  the  time 
of  Descartes.  There,  as  elsewhere,  the  Reformation  had 
been  substantially  a  fiscal  or  economic  revolution,  pro- 
ceeding on  various  lines.  In  Denmark  the  movement, 
favoured  by  the  king,  began  among  the  people  ;  the 
nobility  rapidly  following,  to  their  own  great  profit  ; 
and  finally  Christian  III,  who  ruled  both  Denmark  and 
Norway,  acting  with  the  nobles,  suppressed  Catholic 
worship,  and  confiscated  to  the  crown  the  "  castles, 
fortresses,  and  vast  domains  of  the  prelates.'"'  In 
Sweden  the  king,  Gustavus  Vasa,  took  the  initiative, 
moved  by  sore  need  of  funds,  and  a  thoroughly  anti- 
ecclesiastical  temper,^  the  clergy  having  supported  the 
Danish  rule  which  he  threw  off.  The  burghers  and 
peasants  promptly  joined  him  against  the  clergy  and 
nobles,  enabling  him  to  confiscate  the  bishops'  castles 
and  estates,  as  was  done  in  Denmark  ;  and  he  finally 
secured  himself  with  the  nobles  by  letting  them  reclaim 
lands  granted  by  their  ancestors  to  monasteries.^  His 
anti-feudal  reforms  having  stimulated  new  life  in  many 
ways,  further  evolution  followed. 

Towards  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  there 
are  increasing  traces  of  rationalism  at  the  court  of  the 

'  See  articles  on  Beethoven  by  Macfarren  in  Diet,  of  Univ.  Biog.,  and 
by  Grove  in  the  Diet,  of  Music  and  Musicians. 

^  Koch,  Histor.  View  of  the  European  Nations,  Eng.  trans.  3rd  ed.  p. 
103.  Cp.  Crichton  and  Wheaton,  Scandinavia,  1837,  i,  383-396  ;  Ott«^, 
Scandinavian  History,  1874,  pp.  222-4  ;  Villiers,  Essay  on  the  Reforma- 
tion, Engf.  trans.  1836,  p.  105.  But  cp.  Allen,  Histoire  de  Danemark, 
Fr.  trans,  i,  298-300. 

3  Ott^,  pp.  232-6  ;  Crichton  and  Wheaton,  i,  398-400  ;  Geijer,  History 
of  the  Swedes,  Engf.  trans,  i,  125. 

•*  Koch,  p.  104;  Geijer,  i,  129. 


THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN  STATES  307 

famous  Christina,  who  already  in  her  youth   is  found 
much  interested   in  the  objections  of  "Jews,  heathens, 
and  philosophers  against  Christian  doctrine  ";'  and  her 
invitation  of  Descartes  to  her  court  (1649)  suggests  that 
Sweden  had  been  not  a  little  affected  by  the  revulsion  of 
popular  thought  which  followed  on  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  in  Germany.     In   the  course  of  a  few  years,  the 
new  spirit  had  gone  so  far  as  to    make  church-going 
matter  for  open  scoffing  at  the  Swedish  court  f  and  the 
Queen's  adoption  of  Romanism  soon  after  her  abdication 
appears  to  have  been  by  way  of  revulsion  from  a  state 
of  mind  approaching  atheism,  to  which  she  had   been 
led  by   her  freethinking  French    physician,    Bourdelot, 
after  Descartes's  death. ^     It  is  confidently  asserted,  how- 
ever, that  she  really  cared  for  neither  creed,  and  embraced 
Catholicism   only  by  way  of  conformity  for  social   pur- 
poses, retaining  her  freethinking  views.*     No  important 
literary  results,  however,  could  follow  in   the  then  state 
of  Swedish  culture,  when   the  studies  at  even  the  new 
colleges  were  mainly  confined  to  Latin   and  theology.^ 
Puffendorf,  indeed,  by  his  great  treatise  On  the  Law  of 
Nature  and   Nations    (published    at    Lund,    1672),  did 
much   to  establish   the   utilitarian  and   naturalistic  ten- 
dency in  ethics  which  was  promoted  at  the  same  time  by 
Bishop  Cumberland  in  England  f  but  his  latent  deism 
had  no  great  direct  influence,  his  Scripture-citing  ortho- 
doxy countervailing  it,  although  he  argued  strongly  for 
a  separation   of    Church  and  State. ^      Such   being  the 
culture  conditions,  the  Scandinavian  countries  all  round, 
though  strongly  affected  like  the  Russian  aristocracy  by 
the   French    freethinking    influence    in    the    eighteenth 
century,^  have  only  in  our  own  age  begun  to  contribute 
weightily  to  the  serious  thought  of  Europe. 

'  Geijer,  i,  324.  -  Id.  p.  343  ;  Otte,  p.  292.  _  3  Geijer,  i,  342. 

"•  Crichton  and  Wheaton,  ii,  88-9,  and  refs.  '  5  Geijer,  i,  342. 

*  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe,  iv,  171-8. 

7  See  his  treatise,  Of  the  Nature  mid  Qualification  of  Religion  in  Refer- 
ence to  Civil  Society,  Eng-.  trans,  by  Crull,  1698. 

®  Schweitzer,  Geschichte  der  skandinavischen  Literatur,  ii,  175,  225  ; 
C.-F.  Allen,  Histoire  de  Dajiemark,  Fr.  trans,  ii,  190-1. 


3o8  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

The  most  celebrated  northern  unbeliever  of  the  French 
period  was  Count  Struensee,  who  for  some  years  (1770-2) 
virtually  ruled  Denmark  as  the  favourite  of  the  queen, 
the  king  being  half-witted.  Struensee  was  an  energetic 
and  capable  reformer  :  he  abolished  torture  ;  emanci- 
pated the  enslaved  peasantry  ;  secured  toleration  for  all 
sects  ;  encouraged  the  arts  and  industry  ;  established 
freedom  of  the  press  ;  and  reformed  the  finances,  the 
police,  the  law  courts,  and  sanitation.'  His  very 
reforms  made  his  position  untenable,  and  his  enemies 
soon  effected  his  downfall  and  death.  There  is  an 
elaborate  account  of  his  conversion  to  Christianity  in 
prison  by  the  German  Dr.  Munter,^  which  makes  him 
out  by  his  own  confession  an  excessive  voluptuary.  It 
is  an  extremely  suspicious  document,  exhibiting  strong 
political  bias,  and  giving  Struensee  no  credit  for 
reforms  ;  the  apparent  assumption  being  that  the  con- 
version of  a  reprobate  was  of  more  evidential  value  than 
that  of  a  reputable  and  reflective  type. 

2.  In  Poland,  where,  as  we  saw.  Unitarian  heresy  had 
spread  considerably  in  the  sixteenth  century,  positive 
atheism  is  heard  of  in  1688-9,  when  Count  Liszinski 
(or  Lyszczynski),  among  whose  papers,  it  was  said,  had 
been  found  the  written  statement  that  there  is  no  God,  or 
that  man  had  made  God  out  of  nothing,  was  denounced 
by  the  bishops  of  Posen  and  Kioff,  tried,  beheaded  (his 
tongue  being  first  torn  out),  and  then  burned,  his  ashes 
being  scattered  from  a  cannon. ^  But  even  had  a  less 
murderous  treatment  been  meted  out  to  such  heresy, 
anarchic  Poland,  ridden   by  Jesuits,  was  in  no  state  to 

'  Crichton  and  Wheaton,  ii,  190;  Otte,  p.  322  ;  C.-F.  Allen,  as  cited, 
ii,  194-201. 

^  Trans,  from  the  German,  1774;  2nd  ed.  1825.  See  it  also  in  the 
work,  Converts  from  Infidelity,  by  Andrew  Crichton  ;  vols,  vi  and  vii  ot 
Constable's  Miscellany,  1827.  This  singular  compilation  includes  lives 
of  Boyle,  Bunyan,  Haller,  and  others,  who  were  never  "  infidels." 

3  He  claimed  that  certain  remarks  penned  by  him  in  an  anti-atheistic 
work,  challenging  its  argument,  represented  not  unbelief  but  the  demand 
for  a  better  proof,  which  he  undertook  to  produce.  See  Krasinski, 
Sketch  of  the  Religions  History  of  the  Slavonic  Nations,  1851,  pp.  224-5. 
It  is  remarkable  that  the  Pope,  Innocent  XI,  bitterly  censured  the 
execution. 


THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN  STATES  309 

develop  a  rationalistic  literature.  In  Russia,  again, 
though  in  the  fourteenth  century  the  Strigolniks,  who 
abounded  at  Novgorod,  had  held  strongly  by  anti- 
ecclesiastical  doctrines  of  the  Paulician  and  Lollard 
type,'  literature  and  culture,  as  distinguished  from  folk- 
lore and  monastic  writing,  begin  only  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  At  this  stage  we  find  the  usual  symptom  of 
criticism  of  the  lives  of  the  monks.-  But  the  culture  was 
almost  wholly  ecclesiastical,  and  in  the  seventeenth 
century  the  effort  of  the  Patriarch  Nicon  to  correct  the 
sacred  texts  was  furiously  resisted. ^  Gradually  there 
arose  a  new  secular  fiction,  under  western  influence  ; 
and  Peter  the  Great,  who  promoted  printing  and 
literature  as  he  did  every  other  new  activity,  took  the 
singular  step  of  actually  withdrawing  writing  materials 
from  the  monks,  whose  influence  he  held  to  be  wholly 
reactionary.  Now  began  the  era  of  translations  from 
the  French  ;  and  in  the  day  of  the  great  Catherine  the 
ideas  of  the  philosophes  were  the  ruling  ones  at  her 
court, ^  till  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  put  the  whole 
school  in  disgrace  with  her.  This  did  not  alter  the  tone 
of  thought  of  the  educated  classes  ;  but  in  Russia  as  in 
the  Scandinavian  States  it  was  not  till  the  nineteenth 
century  that  original  serious  literature  began. 

3.  Returning  to  Italy,  no  longer  the  leader  of  Euro- 
pean thought,  but  still  full  of  veiled  freethinking,  we 
find  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  proof  that  no  amount 
of  such  predisposition  can  countervail  thoroughly  bad 
political  conditions.  Ground  down  by  the  matchless 
misrule  of  Spain,  from  which  the  conspiracy  of  the 
monk  Campanella  vainly  sought  to  free  her,  and  by  the 
kindred  tyranny  of  the  Papacy,  Italy  could  produce  in 
its  educated  class,  save  for  the  students  of  economics, 


'    Hardwick,  Church  History:  Middle  Age,  1853,  pp.  386-7. 

=  L.  Sichler,  Hist,  de  la  litt.  Russe,  1887,  pp.  S8-9,  139.  Cp.  Rambaud, 
History  of  Russia,  Eng-.  trans.  1879,  i,  309,  321,  328. 

3  Rambaud,  i,  414-417.  The  struggle  (1654)  elicited  old  forms  of 
heresy,  going  back  to  Manicheism  and  Gnosticism. 

•»  She  bought  the  library  of  Diderot  when  he  was  in  need,  constituted 
him  its  salaried  keeper,  and  actually  had  him  for  a  time  at  her  court. 


3 1  o  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHO  UGHT 

only  triflers,  whose  unbelief  was  of  a  piece  with  their 
cynicism.     While  Naples  and  the  south  decayed,  mental 
energy  had  for  a  time    flourished   in   Tuscany,  where, 
under  the   grand    dukes    from    Ferdinando   I   onwards, 
industry  and  commerce  had  revived  ;  and  even  after  a 
time  of  retrogression  Ferdinando  II  encouraged  science, 
now  made  newly  glorious  by  the  names  of  Galileo  and 
Torricelli.     But  again  there  was  a  relapse  ;  and  at  the 
end  of  the  century,  under  a  bigoted  duke,  Florence  was 
priest-ridden  and,  at  least  in  outward  seeming,  gloomily 
superstitious  ;    while,    save    for    the    better    conditions 
secured  at  Naples  under  the  viceroyalty  of  the  Marquis 
of  Carpi,'  the   rest  of   Italy  was  cynically  corrupt  and 
intellectually    superficial.''     Yet     it     only    needed     the 
breathing  time  and  the  improved  conditions  under  the 
Bourbon    rule    in    the    eighteenth  century  to    set   up  a 
wonderful    intellectual    revival.      First   came    the  great 
work  of  Vico,  the  Principles  of  a   New  Science  {I'jz^)^ 
whereof  the  originality  and  the  depth — qualities  in  which, 
despite  its  incoherences,  it  on  the  whole  excels  Montes- 
quieu's Spirit  of  La%i)s — ^place  him  among  the  great  free- 
thinkers in  philosophy.      It  was  significant  of  much  that 
Vico's  book,  while  constantly  using  the  vocabulary  of 
faith,  grappled  with  the  science  of  human  development 
in  an   essentially  secular  and  scientific  spirit.     This  is 
the    note    of    the    whole    eighteenth    century    in    Italy. 3 
Vico  posits  Deity  and  Providence,  but  proceeds  never- 
theless to  study  the  laws  of  civilisation  inductively  from 
its    phenomena.     He    permanently  obscured    his   case, 
indeed,    by   insisting   on    putting   it   theologically,   and 

'  See  Bishop  Burnet's  Letters,  iv,  ed.  Rotterdam,  1686,  pp.  187-191. 
Burnet  observes  that  "  there  are  societies  of  men  at  Naples  of  freer 
thoughts  than  can  be  found  in  any  other  place  of  Italy  "  ;  and  he  admits 
a  general  tendency  of  intelligent  Italians  to  recoil  from  Christianity  by 
reason  of  Catholic  corruption.  But  at  the  same  time  he  insists  that, 
though  the  laity  speak  with  scorn  of  the  clergy,  "  yet  they  are  masters 
of  the  spirits  of  the  people"  (Id.  pp.  195-7). 

-  Zeller,  Histoire  d' Italic,  pp.  426-432,  450  ;  Procter,  History  of  Italy, 
2nd  ed.  pp.  240,  268. 

3  Professor  Flint,  who  insists  on  the  deep  piety  of  Vico,  notes  that  he 
"  appears  to  have  had  strangely  little  interest  in  Christian  systematic 
theology"  (Vico,  1884,  p.  70). 


THE  REM  A INING  E  UROPEA  N  S  TA  TES  3 1 1 

condemning  Grotius  and  others  for  separating  the  idea 
of  law  from  that  of  religion.  Only  in  a  pantheistic 
sense  has  Vico's  formula  any  validity  ;  and  he  never 
avows  a  pantheistic  view,  refusing  even  to  go  with 
Grotius  in  allowing  that  Hebrew  law  was  akin  to  that  of 
other  nations.  But  a  rationalistic  view,  had  he  held  it, 
would  have  been  barred.  The  wonder  is,  in  the  circum- 
stances, not  that  he  makes  so  much  parade  of  religion, 
but  that  he  could  venture  to  undermine  so  vitally  its 
pretensions,  especially  after  he  had  found  it  prudent  to 
renounce  the  project  of  annotating  the  great  work  of 
Grotius,  De  Jure  Belli  ac  Pads,  on  the  score  that  (as  he 
puts  it  in  his  Autobiography)  a  good  Catholic  must  not 
endorse  a  heretic.  It  is  noteworthy,  indeed,  that  the 
"  New  Science,"  as  Vico  boasted,  arose  in  the  Catholic 
and  not  in  the  Protestant  world.  The  reason  probably 
was  that  the  energy  which  elsewhere  ran  to  criticism  of 
religion  as  such  had  in  Catholic  Italy  to  take  other 
channels.  As  it  was,  Vico's  sociology  aroused  on  the 
one  hand  new  rationalistic  speculation  as  to  the  origin 
of  civilisation,  and  on  the  other  orthodox  protest  on  the 
score  of  its  fundamentally  anti-Biblical  character.  It 
was  thus  attacked  in  1749  by  Damiano  Romano,  and 
later  by  Finetti,  a  professor  at  Padua,  apropos  of  the 
propaganda  raised  by  Vico's  followers  as  to  the  animal 
origin  of  the  human  race.  This  began  with  Vico's 
disciple,  Emmanuele  Duni,  a  professor  at  Rome,  who 
published  a  series  of  sociological  essays  in  1763. 
Thenceforth  for  many  years  there  raged,  "  under  the 
eyes  of  Pope  and  cardinals,"  an  Italian  debate  between 
the  Fermi  and  Antiferini,  the  afifirmers  and  deniers  of 
the  animal  origin  of  man,  the  latter  of  course  taking  up 
their  ground  on  the  Bible,  from  which  Finetti  drew 
twenty-three  objections  to  Vico.'  Duni  found  it  prudent 
to  declare  that  he  had  "  no  intention  of  discussing  the 
origin  of  the  world,  still  less  that  of  the  Hebrew  nation, 
but  solely  that  of  the  Gentile  nations  ";  but  even  when 

'  Professor    Sicilian!,    Sul    Rimiovatnento  della   filosofia    positiva    in 
Italia,  1 87 1,  pp.  37-41. 


312  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

thus  limited  the  debate  set  up  far-reaching  disturbance. 
At  this  stage  Italian  sociology  doubtless  owed  some- 
thing to  Montesquieu  and  Rousseau  ;  but  the  fact 
remains  that  the  Scienza  Nuova  was  a  book  "  truly 
Italian  ;  lta.\ia.n  par  excellence.'"'^  It  was  Vico,  too,  who 
led  the  way  in  the  critical  handling  of  early  Roman 
history,  taken  up  later  by  Beaufort,  and  still  later  by 
Niebuhr ;  and  it  was  he  who  began  the  scientific 
analysis  of  Homer,  followed  up  later  by  Wolf.^  In  the 
same  aee  Muratori  and  Giannone  amassed  their 
unequalled  historical  learning  ;  and  a  whole  series  of 
Italian  writers  broke  new  ground  on  the  field  of  social 
science,  Italy  having  led  the  way  in  this  as  formerly  in 
philosophy  and  physics. ^  The  Hanoverian  Dr.  G.  W. 
Alberti,  of  Italian  descent,  writes  in  1752  that  "Italy  is 
full  of  atheists. "4 

4.  Between  1737  and  1798  may  be  counted  twenty- 
eight  Italian  writers  on  political  economy  ;  and  among 
them  was  one,  Cesare  Beccaria,  who  on  another  theme 
produced  perhaps  the  most  practically  influential  single 
book  of  the  eighteenth  century, s  the  treatise  on  Crimes 
and  Punishments  (1764),  which  affected  penal  methods 
for  the  better  throughout  the  whole  of  Europe.  Even 
were  he  not  known  to  be  a  deist,  his  strictly  secular  and 
rationalist  method  would  have  brought  upon  him  priestly 
suspicion  ;  and  he  had  in  fact  to  defend  himself  against 
pertinacious  and  unscrupulous  attacks, *"  though  he  had 


'  Sicilian!,  p.  36. 

=  Introduction  (by    Mignet?)  to   the    Princess   Belgiojoso's   trans.  La 
Science  Nouvelle,  1844,  p.  cxiii.      Cp.  Flint,   Vico,  p.  231. 

3  See  the  Storia  della  economia  pubblica  in  Italia  of  G.  Pecchio,  1829, 
p.  61  sq.,  as  to  the  claim  of  Antonio  Serra  (Breve  trattato^  etc.,  1613)  to 
be  the  pioneer  of  modern  political  economy.  Cp.  Hallam,  Lit.  of  Europe, 
iii,  164-6.  Buckle  (i-vol.  ed.  p.  122,  tiote)  has  perhaps  with  more  justice 
claimed  the  title  for  William  Stafford,  whose  Compendious  or  briefe 
Examination  of  certain  ordinary  Complaints  (otherwise  called  A  Briefe 
Conceipt  of  Entrlish  Policy)  appeared  in  1581.  But  cp.  Ingram  [Hist,  of 
Pol.  Econ.  1888,  pp.  43-45)  as  to  the  prior  claims  of  Bodin. 

''  Briefe,  as  before  cited,  p.  408. 

5  The  /?£■/  delitti  e  delle  pene  was  translated  into  twenty-two  languages. 
Pecchio,  p.  144. 

^  See  in  the  6th  ed.  of  the  Dei  delitti  (Harlem,    1766)  the  appended 
Risposta  ad  uno  scritto,  etc.,  Parte  prima,  Accuse  d'  empieta. 


THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN  STATES  313 


sought  in  his  book  to  guard  himself  by  occasionally 
"veiling  the  truth  in  clouds."'  As  we  have  seen, 
Beccaria  owed  his  intellectual  awakening  first  to  Mon- 
tesquieu and  above  all  to  Helvetius — another  testimony 
to  the  reformative  virtue  of  all  freethought. 

5.  Of  the  aforesaid  eight-and-twenty  writers  on 
economics,  probably  the  majority  were  freethinkers. 
Among  them,  at  all  events,  were  Algarotti,  the  dis- 
tinguished £esthetician,  one  of  the  group  round  Frederick 
at  Berlin  ;  Filangieri,  whose  work  on  legislation  (put 
on  the  Index  by  the  Papacy)  won  the  high  praise  of 
Franklin  ;  Galiani,  one  of  the  brightest  and  soundest 
wits  in  the  circle  of  the  French  philosophes  ;  Genovesi, 
the  "redeemer  of  the  Italian  mind,  "^  and  the  chief  estab- 
lisher  of  economic  science  for  modern  Italy.  To  these 
names  may  be  added  those  of  Alfieri,  one  of  the 
strongest  anti-clericalists  of  his  age  ;  Bettinelli,  the 
correspondent  of  Voltaire  and  author  of  The  Resurrection 
of  Italy  (1775);  Count  Dandolo,  author  of  a  French 
work  on  The  New  Men  (1799);  and  the  learned  Gian- 
NONE,  author  of  the  great  anti-papal  History  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Naples  (1723),  who,  after  more  than  one 
narrow  escape,  was  thrown  in  prison  by  the  King  of 
Sardinia,  and  died  there  (1748)  after  twelve  years'  con- 
finement. Italy  had  done  her  full  share,  considering 
her  heritage  of  burdens  and  hindrances,  in  the  intel- 
lectual work  of  the  century  ;  and  in  the  names  of 
Galvani  and  Volta  stands  the  record  of  one  more  of  her 
great  contributions  to  human  enlightenment.  Under 
Duke  Leopold  of  Tuscany,  the  Papacy  was  so  far  defied 
that  books  put  on  the  Index  were  produced  for  him 
under  the  imprint  of  London  \^  and  the  papacy  itself  at 
length  gave  way  to  the  spirit  of  reform,  Clement  XIV 
consenting  among  other  things  to  abolish  the  Order  of 
Jesuits  (1773),   after  his   predecessor  had   died   of  grief 

'  See  his  letter  to  the  Abb^  Morellet,  cited  by  Mr.  Farrer  in  ch.  i  of 
his  ed.  of  Crimes  and  Punishments,  1880,  p.  5.  It  describes  the  Milanese 
as  deeply  sunk  in  prejudices. 

^  Pecchio,  p.  123.  3  Zeller,  p.  473. 


314  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 

over  his  proved  impotence  to  resist  the  secular  policy  of 
the  States  around  him.'  Such  was  the  dawn  of  the  new 
Italian  day  that  has  since  slowly  but  steadily  broadened, 
albeit  under  many  a  cloud. 

6.  For  the  rest  of  Europe  during  the  eighteenth 
century,  we  have  to  note  only  traces  of  receptive 
thought.  Spain  under  Bourbon  rule,  as  already  noted, 
experienced  an  administrative  renascence.  Such  men 
as  Count  Aranda  (1718-99)  and  Aszo  y  del  Rio  (1742- 
1814)  wrought  to  cut  the  claws  of  the  Inquisition  and  to 
put  down  the  Jesuits  ;  but  not  yet,  after  the  long  work 
of  destruction  accomplished  by  the  church  in  the  past, 
could  Spain  produce  a  fresh  literature  of  any  far-reaching 
power.  When  Aranda  was  about  to  be  appointed  in 
1766,  his  friends  the  ¥ ve,v\ch.  Encyclopedistes  prematurely 
proclaimed  their  exultation  in  the  reforms  he  was  to 
accomplish  ;  and  he  sadly  protested  that  they  had 
thereby  limited  his  possibilities.^  None  the  less  he 
wrought  much,  the  power  of  the  Inquisition  being 
already  on  the  wane.  Between  1746  and  1759  it  had 
burned  only  ten  persons  ;  from  1759  until  1781  it  burned 
only  four  ;  thereafter  none,^  the  last  case  having  pro- 
voked an  amount  of  comment  which  testified  to  the 
moral  change  wrought  in  Europe  by  a  generation  of 
freethought.  The  trouble  was  that  the  enlightened 
administration  of  Charles  III  in  Spain  did  not  build  up 
a  valid  popular  education,  the  sole  security  for  durable 
rationalism.  Its  school  policy,  though  not  without  zeal, 
was  undemocratic,  and  so  left  the  priests  in  control  of 
the  mind  of  the  multitude  ;  and  throughout  the  reign 
the  ecclesiastical  revenues  had  been  allowed  to  increase 
greatly  from  private  sources,-*  When,  accordingly,  the 
weak  and  pious  Charles  IV  succeeded  in   1788,  three  of 


'  Zeller,    pp.  478-9. 

-  Coxe,  Memoirs  of  the  Boiirhon  Kings  of  Spain,  ed.  1815,  iv,  408. 

3  Buckle,  iii,  547-S  (i-vol.  ed.  599-600).  The  last  victim  seems  to  have 
been  a  woman  accused  of  witchcraft.  Her  nose  was  cut  off  before  her 
execution.  See  the  Marokkanische  Briefe,  1785,  p.  36;  and  Buckle's 
note  272. 

•»  Buckle,  p.  618. 


THE  REMAINING  EUROPEAN  STATES  315 

the  anti-clerical  Ministers  of  his  predecessor,  including 
Aranda,  were  put  under  arrest,'  and  clericalism  resumed 
full  sway,  to  the  extent  even  of  vetoing  the  study  of 
moral  philosophy  in  the  universities.-  Mentally  and 
materially  alike,  Spain  relapsed  to  her  former  state  of 
indigence  ;  and  the  struggle  for  national  existence 
against  Napoleon  evoked  rather  traditionalist  sentiment 
than  the  spirit  of  innovation. 

7.  Portugal  in  the  same  period,  despite  the  anti- 
clerical policy  of  the  famous  Marquis  of  Pombal,  made  no 
noticeable  intellectual  progress.  Though  that  powerful 
statesman  in  1761  abolished  slavery  in  the  kingdom, ^ 
he  too  failed  to  see  the  need  for  popular  education, 
while  promoting  that  of  the  upper  classes. +  His  expul- 
sion of  the  Jesuits,  accordingly,  did  but  raise  up  against 
him  a  new  set  of  enemies  in  the  shape  of  the  Jacobeos, 
"  the  Blessed,"  a  species  of  Catholic  Puritan,  who  accused 
him  of  impiety.  His  somewhat  forensic  defence^  leaves 
the  impression  that  he  was  in  reality  a  deist  ;  but  though 
he  fought  the  fanatics  by  imprisoning  the  Bishop  of 
Coimbra,  their  leader,  and  by  causing  Moliere's  Tartufe 
to  be  translated  and  performed,  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
shown  any  favour  to  the  deistical  literature  of  which  the 
Bishop  had  composed  a  local  Index  Expurgatorius.^ 
In  Portugal,  as  later  in  Spain,  accordingly,  a  complete 
reaction  set  in  with  the  death  of  the  enlightened  king. 
Dom  Joseph  died  in  1777,  and  Pombal  was  at  once 
disgraced  and  his  enemies  released,  the  pious  Queen 
Maria  and  her  Ministers  subjecting  him  to  persecution 
for  some  years.  In  1783,  the  Queen,  who  became  a 
religious  maniac,  and  died  insane,^  is  found  establishing 
new  nunneries,  and  so  adding  to  one  of  the  main  factors 
in  the  impoverishment,  moral  and  financial,  of  Portugal. 

8.  During  the  period  we  have  been  surveying,  up  to 
the  French   Revolution,  Switzerland,  which  owed  much 

'  Buckle,  p.  612.  -  Id.  p.  613. 

3  Carnota,  The  Marquis  of  Pombal,  2nd  ed.   1871,  p.  242. 

'*  Id.  p.  240.  5  Id.  pp.  261-2.  ''  Id.  p.  262.  7  Id.  p.  375. 


31 6  MODERN  EUROPEAN  FREETHOUGHT 


of  new  intellectual  life  to  the  influx  of  French  Protestants 
at  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes/  contributed  to 
the  European  movement  some  names,  of  which  by  far 
the  most  famous  is  Rousseau  ;  and  the  potent  presence 
of  Voltaire  cannot  have  failed  to  affect  Swiss  culture. 
The  chief  native  service  to  intellectual  progress  thus  far, 
however,  was  rendered  in  the  field  of  the  natural  sciences, 
Swiss  religious  opinion  being  only  passively  liberalised, 
mainly  in  a  Unitarian  direction. 


'   P.  Godet,  Hist.  lift,  de  la  Suisse  fran^aise,  1900. 


Chapter  XVII. 

EARLY    FREETHOUGHT   IN   THE    UNITED 

STATES 

I.  Perhaps  the  most  signal  of  all  the  proofs  of  the 
change  wrought  in  the  opinion  of  the  civilised  world  in 
the  eighteenth  century  is  the  fact  that  at  the  time  of  the 
War  of  Independence  the  leading  statesmen  of  the 
American  colonies  were  deists.  Such  were  Benjamin 
Franklin,  the  diplomatist  of  the  Revolution  ;  Thomas 
Paine,  its  prophet  and  inspirer ;  Washington,  its 
commander  ;  and  Jefferson,  its  typical  legislator. 
But  for  these  four  men  the  American  Revolution 
probably  could  not  have  been  accomplished  in  that  age  ; 
and  they  thus  represent  in  a  peculiar  degree  the  power 
of  new  ideas,  in  fit  conditions,  to  transform  societies,  at 
least  politically.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fashion  in 
which  their  relation  to  the  creeds  of  their  time  has  been 
garbled,  alike  in  American  and  English  histories, 
proves  how  completely  they  were  in  advance  of  the 
average  thought  of  their  day  :  and  also  how  effectively 
the  mere  institutional  influence  of  creeds  can  arrest  a 
nation's  mental  development.  It  is  still  one  of  the  stock 
doctrines  of  religious  sociology  in  England  and  America 
that  deism,  miscalled  atheism,  wrought  the  Reign  of 
Terror  in  the  French  Revolution  ;  when  as  a  matter  of 
fact  the  same  deism  was  at  the  head  of  affairs  in  the 
American. 

2.  The  rise  of  rationalism  in  the  colonies  must  be 
traced  in  the  main  to  the  imported  English  literature  of 
the  eighteenth  century  ;  for  the  first  Puritan  settlements 
had  contained  at  most  only  a  fraction  of  freethought ; 
and  the  conditions,  so  deadly  for  all   manner  even   of 

317 


3i8      EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

devout  heresy,  made  avowed  unbelief  impossible.  The 
superstitions  and  cruelties  of  the  Puritan  clergy,  how- 
ever, must  have  bred  a  silent  reaction,  which  prepared  a 
soil  for  the  deism  of  the  next  age/  "The  perusal  of  Shaftes- 
bury and  Collins,"  writes  Franklin  with  reference  to  his 
early  youth,  "had  made  me  a  sceptic,"  after  being 
"previously  so  as  to  many  doctrines  of  Christianity."^ 
This  was  in  his  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  year,  about 
1720,  so  that  the  importation  of  deism  had  been  prompt.^ 
Throughout  life  he  held  to  the  same  opinion,  conforming 
sufficiently  to  keep  on  fair  terms  with  his  neighbours, ■♦ 
and  avoiding  anything  like  critical  propaganda;  though 
on  challenge,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  he  avowed  his 
negatively  deistic  position. ^ 

3.  Similarly  prudent  was  Jef"ferson,  who,  like 
Franklin  and  Paine,  extolled  the  Gospel  Jesus  and  his 
teachings,  but  rejected  the  notion  of  supernatural 
revelation.^  In  a  letter  written  so  late  as  1822  to  a 
Unitarian  correspondent,  while  refusing  to  publish 
another  of  similar  tone,  on  the  score  that  he  was  too  old 
for  strife,  he  declared  that  he  "  should  as  soon  undertake 
to  bring  the  crazy  skulls  of  Bedlam  to  sound  under- 
standing as  to  inculcate  reason  into  that  of  an  Atha- 
nasian."^  His  experience  of  the  New  England  clergy  is 
expressed  in  allusions  to  Connecticut  as  having  been 
"  the  last  retreat  of  monkish  darkness,  bigotry,  and 
abhorrence  of  those  advances  of  the  mind  which   had 

'  John  Wesley  in  his  Journal,  datingf  May,  1737,  speaks  of  having 
everywhere  met  many  more  "  converts  to  infidelity  "  than  "  converts  to 
Popery,"  with  apparent  reference  to  Carolina. 

-  Such  is  the  wording-  of  the  passage  in  the  Attfobiogtaphy  in  the 
Edinburgh  edition  of  1803,  p.  25,  which  follows  the  French  translation 
of  the  original  MS.  In  the  edition  of  the  Autobiography  and  Letters  in 
the  Minerva  Library,  edited  by  Mr.  Bettany  (1891,  p.  11),  which  follows 
Mr.  Bigelow's  edition  of  1879,  it  runs :  "  Being  then,  from  reading 
Shaftesbury  and  Collins,  become  a  real  doubter  in  many  points  of  our 
religious  doctrine " 

3  Only  in  1784,  however,  appeared  the  first  anti-Christian  work  pub- 
lished in  America,  Ethan  Allen's  Reason  the  only  Oracle  of  Man.  As  to 
its  positions,  see  Conway,  Life  of  Paine,  ii,  192-3. 

*  Autobiography,  Bettany 's  ed.  pp.  56,  65,  74,  77,  etc. 

5  Letter  of  March  gth,  1790.     Id.  p.  636. 

^  Cp.  J.  T.  Morse's  Thomas  Jefferson,  pp.  339-340. 

'  MS.  cited  by  Dr.  Conway,  Life  of  Paine,  ii,  310-31 1. 


EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  UNITED  STATES       319 

carried  the  other  States  a  century  ahead  of  them  ";  and 
in  congratulations  with  John  Adams  (who  had  written 
that  "  this  would  be  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds  if 
there  were  no  religion  in  it  "),  when  "  this  den  of  the 
priesthood  is  at  last  broken  up."'  John  Adams,  whose 
letters  with  their  '*  crowd  of  scepticisms "  kept  even 
Jefferson  from  sleep, ^  seems  to  have  figured  as  a  member 
of  a  Congregationalist  church,  while  in  reality  a  Uni- 
tarian.^  Still  more  prudent  was  Washington,  who 
seems  to  have  ranked  habitually  as  a  member  of  the 
episcopal  church  ;  but  concerning  whom  Jefferson 
relates  that,  when  the  clergy,  having  noted  his  constant 
abstention  from  any  public  mention  of  the  Christian 
religion,  so  penned  an  address  to  him  on  his  with- 
drawal from  the  Presidency  as  almost  to  force  him  to 
some  declaration,  he  answered  every  part  of  the  address 
but  that,  which  he  entirely  ignored.  It  is  further  noted 
that  only  in  his  valedictory  letter  to  the  governors  of  the 
States,  on  resigning  his  commission,  did  he  speak  of  the 
"  benign  influence  of  the  Christian  religion  "^ — the 
common  tone  of  the  American  deists  of  that  day.  It 
is  further  established  that  Washington  avoided  the 
Communion  in  church. ^  For  the  rest,  the  broad  fact 
that  all  mention  of  deity  was  excluded  from  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  must  be  historically  taken  to 
signify  a  profound  change  in  the  convictions  of  the 
leading  minds  among  the  people  as  compared  with  the 
beliefs  of  their  ancestors.     At  the  same   time,  the  fact 

'  Memoirs  of  Jefferson,  1829,  iv,  300-1.  The  date  is  1817.  These  and 
other  passages  exhibiting:  Jefferson's  deism  are  cited  in  Rayner's 
Sketches  of  the  Life,  etc.,  of  Jefferson,  1832,  pp.  513-517. 

-  Memoirs  of  Jefferson,  iv,  331. 

3  Dr.  Conway,  Life  of  Paine,  ii,  310. 

•*  Extract  from  Jefferson's  Journal  under  date  February  ist,  1800,  in 
the  Memoirs,  iv,  512.  Gouverneur  Morris,  whom  Jefferson  furtiier  cites 
as  to  Washing-ton's  unbelief,  is  not  a  ver}'  good  witness  ;  but  the  main 
fact  cited  is  significant. 

5  Compare  the  testimony  given  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Wilson,  of  Albany,  in 
1 83 1,  as  cited  by  R.  D.  Owen  in  his  Discussion  on  the  Authenticity  of  the 
Bible  with  O.  Bacheler  (London,  ed.  1840,  p.  231),  with  the  replies  on  the 
other  side  (pp.  233-4).  Washington's  death-bed  attitude  was  that  of  a 
deist.  See  all  the  available  data  for  his  supposed  orthodoxy  in  Sparks' 
Life  of  Washington,  1852,  app.  iv. 


320      EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

that  they  as  a  rule  dissembled  their  unbelief  is  a  proof 
that,  even  where  legal  penalties  do  not  attach  to  an 
avowal  of  serious  heresy,  there  inheres  in  the  menace  of 
mere  social  ostracism  a  power  sufficient  to  coerce  the 
outward  life  of  public  and  professional  men  of  all  grades, 
in  a  democratic  community  where  faith  maintains  and  is 
maintained  by  a  competitive  multitude  of  priests.  With 
this  force  the  freethought  of  our  own  age  has  to  reckon, 
after  Inquisitions  and  blasphemy  laws  have  become 
obsolete. 

4.  Nothing  in  American  culture-history  more  clearly 
proves  the  last  proposition  than  the  case  of  Thomas 
Paine,  the  virtual  founder  of  modern  democratic  free- 
thought  in  Great  Britain  and  the  States.'  It  does  not 
appear  that  Paine  openly  professed  any  heresy  while  he 
lived  in  England,  or  in  America  before  the  French  Revo- 
lution. Yet  the  first  sentence  of  his  Age  of  Reason,  of 
which  the  first  part  was  written  shortly  before  his  im- 
prisonment, under  sentence  of  death  from  the  Robes- 
pierre Government,  in  Paris  (1793),  shows  that  he  had 
long  held  pronounced  deistic  opinions.'  They  were 
probably  matured  in  the  States,  where,  as  we  have  seen, 
such  views  were  often  privately  held,  though  there,  as 
Franklin  is  said  to  have  jesuitically  declared  in  his  old 
age,  by  way  of  encouraging  immigration  :  "  Atheism  is 
unknown  ;  infidelity  rare  and  secret,  so  that  persons  may 
live  to  a  great  age  in  this  country  without  having  their 
piety  shocked  by  meeting  with  either  an  atheist  or  an 
infidel."  Paine  did  an  unequalled  service  to  the 
American  Revolution  by  his  Common  Sense  and  his 
series  of  pamphlets  headed  The  Crisis  :  there  is,  in  fact, 
little  question  that  but  for  the  intense  stimulus  thus 
given  by  him  at  critical  moments  the  movement  might 
have  collapsed  at  an  early  stage.  Yet  he  seems  to  have 
had  no  thought  there  and   then  of  avowing  his  deism. 

'  So  far  as  is  known,  Paine  was  the  first  writer  to  use  the  expression, 
"the  religion  of  Humanity."  See  Conway's  Life  of  Poine,  1892,  ii,  206. 
To  Paine's  influence,  too,  appears  to  be  due  the  founding  oi'  the  first 
American  Anti-Slavery  Society.     Id.  i,  51-2,  60,  80,  etc. 

^  Cp.  Dr.  Conway's  Life  of  Paine, 'n,  20^-"]. 


EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES      321 

It  was  in  part  for  the  express  purpose  of  resisting  the 
ever-strengtheninsf  attack  of  atheism  in  France  on  deism 
itself  that  he  undertook  to  save  it  by  repudiating  the 
Jud^eo-Christian  revelation  ;  and  it  is  not  even  certain 
that  he  would  have  issued  the  Age  of  Reason  when  it  did 
appear,  had  he  not  supposed  he  was  going"  to  his  death 
when  put  under  arrest,  on  which  score  he  left  the  manu- 
script for  publication/ 

5.  Its  immediate  effect  was  much  greater  in  Britain, 
where  his  Rights  of  Alan  had  already  won  him  a  vast 
popularity  in  the  teeth  of  the  most  furious  reaction,  than 
in  America,  There,  to  his  profound  chagrin,  he  found 
that  his  honest  utterance  of  his  heresy  brought  on  him 
hatred,  calumny,  ostracism,  and  even  personal  and 
political  molestation.  In  1797  he  had  founded  in  Paris 
the  little  ''  Church  of  Theo-philanthropy,"  beginning  his 
inaugural  discourse  with  the  words  :  "  Religion  has  two 
principal  enemies.  Fanaticism  and  Infidelity,  or  that 
which  is  called  atheism.  The  first  requires  to  be  com- 
bated by  reason  and  morality  ;  the  other  by  natural 
philosophy."^  These  were  his  settled  convictions  ;  and 
he  lived  to  find  himself  shunned  and  vilified,  in  the  name 
of  religion,  in  the  country  whose  freedom  he  had  so 
puissantly  wrought  to  win.^     The  Quakers,  his  father's 

'  A  letter  of  Franklin  to  someone  who  had  shown  him  a  freethinking 
manuscript,  advising;  against  its  publication  (Bettany's  ed.  p.  620),  has 
been  conjecturally  connected  with  Paine,  but  was  clearly  not  addressed 
to  him.  Franklin  died  in  179a,  and  Paine  was  out  of  America  from  1787 
onwards.  But  the  letter  is  in  every  way  inapplicable  to  the  Age  of 
Reason.  The  remark  :  "  If  men  are  so  wicked  ".inth  religion,  what  would 
they  be  ivitliout  it  ?  "  could  not  be  made  to  a  devout  deist  like  Paine. 

^  Conway,  Life  of  Paine,  1892,  ii,  254-5. 

3  See  Dr.  Conway's  chapter,  "  The  American  Inquisition,"  vol.  ii, 
ch.  16  ;  also  pp.  361-2,  374,  379.  The  falsity  of  the  ordinary  charges 
against  Paine's  character  is  finally  made  clear  by  Dr.  Conway,  ch.  xix, 
and  pp.  371,  383,  419,  423.  Cp.  the  author's  pamphlet,  Thomas  Paine : 
An  Investigation  (Bonner).  The  chronically  revived  story  of  his  death- 
bed remorse  for  his  writings — long  ago  exposed  (Conwa}-,  ii,  420) — is 
definitively  discredited  in  the  latest  reiteration.  That  occurs  in  the 
Life  and  Letters  of  Dr.  R.  H.  Thomas  (1905),  the  mother  of  whose 
stepmother  was  the  Mrs.  Mary  Hinsdale,  n^e  Roscoe,  on  whose  testi- 
mony the  legend  rests.  Dr.  Thomas,  a  Quaker  of  the  highest  character, 
accepted  the  story  without  question,  but  incidentally  tells  of  the  old  lad}' 
(p.  13)  that  '^  her  ii'anderi>ig  fancies  had  all  the  charm  of  a  present  fairy- 
tale to  us."  No  further  proof  is  needed,  after  the  previous  exposure,  of 
the  worthlessness  of  the  testimony  in  question. 

VOL.  II  Y 


322       EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 


sect,  refused  him  a  burial-place.  He  has  had  sympathy 
and  fair  play,  as  a  rule,  only  from  the  atheists  whom  he 
distrusted  and  opposed,  or  from  thinkers  who  no  longer 
hold  by  deism.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  in  his 
last  years  the  deistic  optimism  which  survived  the  deep 
disappointments  of  the  French  Revolution  began  to  give 
way  before  deeper  reflection  on  the  cosmic  problem,'  if 
not  before  the  treatment  he  had  undergone  at  the  hands 
of  Unitarians  and  Trinitarians  alike.  The  Butleriain 
argument,  that  Nature  is  as  unsatisfactory  as  revelation, 
had  been  pressed  upon  him  by  Bishop  Watson  in  a 
reply  to  the  Age  of  Reason;  and  though,  like  most 
deists  of  his  age,  he  regarded  it  as  a  vain  defence  of 
orthodoxy,  he  was  not  the  man  to  remain  long  blind  to 
its  force  against  deistic  assumptions.  Like  Franklin,  he 
had  energetically  absorbed  and  given  out  the  new  ideals 
of  physical  science  ;  his  originality  in  the  invention  of 
a  tubular  iron  bridge,  and  in  the  application  of  steam  to 
navigation, ""  being  nearly  as  notable  as  that  of  Franklin's 
great  discovery  concerning  electricity.  Had  the  two 
men  drawn  their  philosophy  from  the  France  of  the 
latter  part  of  the  century  instead  of  the  England  of  the 
first,  they  had  doubtless  gone  deeper.  As  it  was,  tem- 
peramental optimism  had  kept  both  satisfied  with  the 
transitional  formula  ;  and  in  the  France  of  before  and 
after  the  Revolution  they  lived  pre-occupied  with 
politics. 

6.  The  habit  of  reticence  or  dissimulation  among 
American  public  men  was  only  too  surely  confirmed  by 
the  treatment  meted  out  to  Paine.  Few  stood  by  him  ; 
and  the  vigorous  deistic  movement  set  up  in  his  latter 
years  by  Elihu  Palmer  soon  succumbed  to  the  condi- 
tions,^  though  Palmer's  book.  The  Principles  of  Nature 
(1802,  rep.  by  Richard  Carlile,  1819),  is  a  powerful 
attack  on  the  Judaic  and  Christian  systems  all  along  the 

'  Conway,  ii,  371. 

^  See  the  details  in  Conway's  Life,  ii,  280-1,  and  note.  He  had  also  a 
scheme  for  a  g-unpowder  motor  {Id.  and  i,  240),  and  various  other 
remarkable  plans. 

3  Conway,  ii,  362-371. 


EARLY  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES      323 

line.  George  Houston,  leaving  England  after  two  years' 
imprisonment  for  his  translation  of  d'Holbach's  Ecce 
Homo,  went  to  New  York,  where  he  edited  the  Minerva 
(1822),  reprinted  his  book,  and  started  a  freethought 
journal,  The  Correspondence.  That,  however,  lasted 
only  eighteen  months.  All  the  while,  such  statesmen 
as  Madison  and  Monroe,  the  latter  Paine's  personal 
friend,  seem  to  have  been  of  his  way  of  thinking,' 
though  the  evidence  is  scanty.  The  essential  evil  is 
that  the  baseness  of  partisan  politics  is  at  all  times 
ready  to  turn  a  man's  heresy  to  his  political  ruin  ;  such 
being  in  part  the  explanation  of  the  gross  ingratitude 
shown  to  Paine.  Thus  it  came  about  that,  save  for  the 
liberal  movement  of  the  Hicksite  Quakers,-  the  secret 
American  deism  of  Paine's  day  was  decorously  trans- 
formed into  the  later  Unitarianism,  the  extremely  rapid 
advance  of  which  in  the  next  generation  is  the  best  proof 
of  the  commonness  of  private  unbelief.  The  influence 
of  Priestley,  who,  persecuted  at  hom.e,  went  to  end  his 
days  in  the  States,  had  doubtless  much  to  do  with  the 
Unitarian  development  there,  as  in  England  ;  but  it 
seems  certain  that  the  whole  deistic  movement,  including 
the  work  of  Paine  and  Palmer,  had  tended  to  move  out 
of  orthodoxy  many  of  those  who  now,  recoiling  from 
the  fierce  hostility  directed  against  the  outspoken  free- 
thinkers, sought  a  more  rational  form  of  creed  than  that 
of  the  orthodox  churches.  The  deistic  tradition  in  a 
manner  centred  in  the  name  of  Jefferson,  and  the  known 
deism  of  so  popular  a  leader  would  do  much  to  make 
fashionable  a  heresy  which  combined  his  philosophy 
with  a  decorous  attitude  to  the  Sacred  Books. 


'  Testimonies  quoted  by  R.  D.  Owen,  as  cited,  pp.  231-2. 
-  Conway,  ii,  422. 


Chapter  XVIII. 

FREETHOUGHT    IN   THE    NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

As  with  the  cause  of  democracy,  so  with  the  cause  of 
rationaUsm,  the  forward  movement  which  was  checked 
for  a  generation  by  the  reaction  against  the  French 
Revolution  grew  only  the  deeper  and  more  powerful 
through  the  check;  and  the  nineteenth  century  closed  on 
a  record  of  freethinking  progress  which  may  be  said  to 
outbulk  that  of  all  the  previous  centuries  of  the  modern 
era  together.  So  great  has  been  the  activity  of 
the  century  in  point  of  mere  quantity  that  it  is  im- 
possible, within  the  scheme  of  a  "  Short  History,"  to 
treat  it  on  even  such  a  reduced  scale  of  narrative  as  has 
been  applied  to  the  past,  A  detailed  history  from  the 
French  Revolution  onwards  probably  requires  a  separate 
book  as  large  as  the  present.  It  must  here  suffice, 
therefore,  to  take  a  series  of  broad  and  general  views  of 
the  century's  work,  leaving  adequate  critical  and  narra- 
tive treatment  for  a  separate  undertaking.  The  most 
helpful  method  seems  to  be  that  of  a  conspectus  (i) 
of  the  main  movements  and  forces  that  have  affected  in 
varying  degrees  the  thought  of  the  civilised  world,  and 
(2)  of  the  advance  made  and  the  point  reached  in  the 
culture  of  the  nations,  separately  considered.  At  the 
same  time,  the  forces  of  rationalism  may  be  discriminated 
into  Particular  and  General.  We  may  then  roughly 
represent  the  lines  of  movement,  in  non-chronological 
order,  as  follows  : — ■ 

I. — Forces  of  criticism  and  corrective  thought  bearing  expressly 

on  religious  beliefs. 

I.  In  Great  Britain  and  America,  the  new  movements  of 
popular  freethought  deriving  immediately  from  Paine,  and  last- 
ing continuously  to  the  present  day. 

324 


FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igih  CENTURY  325 


2.  In  France  and  elsewhere,  the  reverberation  of  the  attack 
of  Voltaire,  d'Holbach,  Dupuis,  and  Volney,  carried  on  most 
persistently  in  Catholic  countries  by  the  Freemasons,  as  against 
official  orthodoxy  after  181 5. 

3.  German  "  rationalism,"  proceeding  from  English  deism, 
moving  towards  naturalist  as  against  supernaturalist  concep- 
tions, dissolving  the  notion  of  the  miraculous  in  both  Old  and 
New  Testament  history,  and  all  along  affecting  studious 
thought  in  other  countries. 

4.  The  compromise  of  Lessing,  claiming  for  all  religions  a 
place  in  a  scheme  of  "divine  education." 

5.  In  England,  the  neo-Christianity  of  the  school  of  Coleridge, 
a  disintegrating  force,  promoting  the  "  Broad  Church  " 
tendency,  which  in  Dean  Milman  is  so  pronounced  as  to  bring 
on  him  charges  of  rationalism. 

6.  The  utilitarianism  of  the  school  of  Bentham,  carried  into 
moral  and  social  science. 

7.  Comtism,  making  little  direct  impression  on  the  "con- 
structive "  lines  laid  by  the  founder,  but  affecting  critical 
thought  in  all  directions. 

8.  German  philosophy,  Kantian  and  post-Kantian,  in  parti- 
cular the  Hegelian,  turned  to  anti-Christian  and  anti-super- 
naturalist  account  by  Strauss,  Vatke,  Bruno  Bauer,  Feuerbach, 
and  -Marx. 

9.  German  atheism  and  scientific  "materialism" — repre- 
sented by  Feuerbach  and  Biichner  (who,  however,  rejected  the 
term  "  materialism  "  as  inappropriate). 

10.  Revived  English  deism,  involving  destructive  criticism  of 
Christianity,  as  in  Hennell,  F.  VV.  Newman,  R.  W.  Mackay, 
W.  R.  Greg,  Theodore  Parker,  and  Thomas  Scott,  partly  in 
co-operation  with  Unitarianism. 

11.  American  transcendentalism  or  pantheism — the  school  of 
Emerson. 

12.  Colenso's  preliminary  attack  on  the  Pentateuch,  a 
systematised  return  to  Voltairean  common-sense,  rectifying  the 
unscientific  course  of  the  "higher  criticism  "  on  the  historical 
issue. 

13.  The  later  or  scientific  "higher  criticism"  of  the  Old 
Testament — represented  by  Kuenen,  Wellhausen,  and  their 
successors. 

14.  New  historical  criticism  of  Christian  origins,  in  particular 
the  work  of  Strauss  and  Baur  in  Germany,  Renan  and  Havet 
in  France,  and  their  successors. 

15.  Exhibition  of  rationalism  within  the  churches,  as  in 
Germany,  Holland,  and  Switzerland  generally  ;  in  England  in 
the  Essays  and  Reviews ;    later   in    multitudes   of  essays  and 


326  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

books,  and  in  the  documentary  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  ; 
in  America  in  popular  theology. 

16.  Association  of  rationalistic  doctrine  with  the  Socialist 
movements,  new  and  old,  from  Owen  to  Marx. 

17.  Communication  of  doubt  and  questioning"  through  poetry 
and  belles-lettres — as  in  Shelley,  Byron,  Coleridge,  Clough, 
Tennyson,  Carlyle,  Arnold,  Browning",  Swinburne,  Heine,  Victor 
Hugo,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Leopardi,  and  some  recent  French  and 
English  novelists. 

n. — Modern  Science,  physical,  mental,  atid  moral,  sapping  the 
bases  of  all  supernaturalist  systems. 

1.  Astronomy,  newly  directed  by  Laplace. 

2.  Geology,  gradually'connected  (as  in  Britain  by  Chambers) 
with 

3.  Biology,  made  definitely  non-deistic  by  Darwin. 

4.  The  comprehension  of  all  science  in  the  Evolution  Theory, 
as  b}'  Spencer,  advancing  on  Comte. 

5.  Psychology,  as  regards  localisation  oi  brain  functions. 

6.  Comparative  mythology,  as  yet  imperfectly  applied  to 
Christism. 

7.  Sociology,  as  outlined  by  Comte,  Buckle,  Spencer,  Winwood 
Reade,  Lester  Ward,  Giddings,  Tarde,  Durkheim,  and  others, 
on  strictly  naturalistic  lines. 

8.  Comparative  Hierology  ;  the  methodical  application  of 
principles  insisted  on  by  all  the  deists,  and  formulated  in  the 
interests  of  deism  by  Lessing,  but  latterly  freed  of  his  impli- 
cations. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  may  group  somewhat  as  follows 
the  general  forces  of  retardation  of  freethought  operating 
throughout  the  century  : — 

1.  Penal  laws,  still  operative  in  Germany  against  popular 
freethought  propaganda,  and  till  recently  in  Britain  against 
any  endowment  of  freethought. 

2.  Class  interests,  involving  in  the  first  half  of  the  century  a 
social  conspiracy  against  rationalism  in  England. 

3.  Commercial  pressure  thus  set  up,  and  always  involved  in 
the  influence  of  churches. 

4.  In  England,  identification  of  orthodox  Dissent  with 
political  Liberalism — a  sedative. 

5.  Concessions  by  the  clergy,  especially  in  England  and  the 
United  States — to  many,  another  sedative. 

6.  Above  all,  the  production  of  new  masses  of  popular 
ignorance  in  the  Industrial  nations,  and  continued  lack  of 
education  In  the  others. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  327 

7.  Ow  this  basis,  business-like  and  in  large  part  secular- 
minded  organisation  of  the  endowed  churches,  as  against  a 
freethought  propaganda  hampered  by  the  previously  named 
causes,  and  in  England  by  laws  which  veto  all  direct  endow- 
ment of  anti-Christian  heresy. 

It  remains  to    make,  with   forced    brevity,  the    surveys 
thus  outlined. 

§  I .  Popular  Propaganda. 

I.   If  any  one  circumstance  more  than  another  differen- 
tiates the  Hfe  of  to-day  from  that  of  older  civilisations,  or 
from  that  of  previous  centuries  of  the  modern  era,  it  is 
the  diffusion  of  rationalistic  views  among  the  "  common 
people."     In  no  other  age  is  to  be  found  the  phenomenon 
of  widespread  critical  skepticism  among  the   labouring 
masses  ;  in  all  previous  ages,  though  chronic  complaint 
is  made  of  some  unbelief  among  the  uneducated,   the 
constant  and  abject  ignorance  of  the  mass  of  the  people 
has    been   the    sure    foothold   of  superstitious    systems. 
And    this  vital    change    in    the    distribution   of    know- 
ledge    is     largely    to     be    attributed    to     the     written 
and    spoken    teaching    of   a    line    of   men    who    made 
popular  enlightenment  their  great  aim.     Their  leading 
type    among    the    English-speaking    races    is    Thomas 
Paine,  whom    we    have    seen    combining   a  gospel    of 
democracy    with    a    gospel    of    critical    reason    in    the 
midst   of    the    French    Revolution.     Never   before    had 
rationalism    been    made    popular.     The    English    and 
French    deists    had   written    for  the    middle   and    upper 
classes.     Peter    Annet    was    practically    the    first   who 
sought   to    reach   the    multitude  ;    and    his   punishment 
expressed  the  special  resentment  aroused  in  the  governing 
classes  by  such  a  policy.     Of  all  the  English  freethinkers 
of  the  earlier  deistical  period  he  alone  was  selected  for 
reprinting  by  the  propagandists  of  the    Paine   period. 
Paine  was  to  Annet,  however,  as  a  cannon  to  a  musket, 
and  through  the  democratic  ferment  of  his  day  he  won 
an    audience   a    hundredfold    wider   than    Annet    could 
dream  of  reaching.     The  anger  of  the  governing  classes, 


328  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  icjih  CENTURY 

in  a  time  of  anti-democratic  panic,  was  proportional. 
Paine  would  have  been  at  least  imprisoned  iorh\s  Rights 
of  Man  had  he  not  fled  from  England  in  time  ;  and  the 
sale  of  all  his  books  was  furiously  prohibited  and 
ferociously  punished.  Yet  they  circulated  everywhere, 
even  in  Protestant  Ireland,'  hitherto  affected  only  under 
the  surface  of  upper-class  life  by  deism.  The  circulation 
of  Bishop  Watson's  Apology  in  reply  only  served  to 
spread  the  contagion,  as  it  brought  the  issues  before 
multitudes  who  would  notrotherwise  have  heard  of  them.^ 
All  the  while,  direct  propaganda  was  carried  on  by  trans- 
lations and  reprints  as  well  as  by  fresh  English  tractates. 
Diderot's  Thoughts  on  Religion,  and  Freret's  Letter  from 
ThrasybuliLs  to  Lencippus,  seem  to  have  been  great 
favourites  among  the  Painites,  as  was  Elihu  Palmer's 
Principles  of  Nature  ;  and  Volney's  Ruins  of  Empires 
had  a  large  vogue.  Condorcet's  Esquisse  had  been 
promptly  translated  in  1795  ;  the  translation  of 
d'Holbach's  System  of  Nature  reached  a  third  edition 
in  1817  ;3  that  of  Raynal's  History  had  been  reprinted 
in  1804;  and  that  of  Helvetius  On  the  Mind  in  1810; 
while  an  English  abridgment  of  Bayle  in  four  volumes, 
on  freethinking  lines,  appeared  in  1826. 

Meantime,  new  writers  arose  to  carry  into  fuller 
detail  the  attacks  of  Paine,  sharpening  their  weapons  on 
those  of  the  more  scholarly  French  deists.  A  Life  of 
Jesus  Christ,  including  his  Apocryphal  LListory,''  was 
published  in  1818,  with  such  astute  avoidance  of  all 
comment  that  it  escaped  prosecution.  Others,  taking 
a  more  daring  course,  fared  accordingly.  George 
Houston  translated  the  Ecce  LLomo  of  d'Holbach,  first 


'  Lecky,  Hist,  of  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth   Ce)itury,  ed.  1892,  iii,  382. 

=  Cp.  Conway's  life  of  Paine,  ii,  252-3. 

3  This  translation,  issued  by  "  Sherwood,  Xeely,  and  Jones,  Pater- 
noster Row,  and  all  booksellers,  "  purports  to  be  "  with  additions."  The 
translation,  however,  has  altered  d'Holbach's  atheism  to  deism. 

•*  By  W.  Huttman.  The  book  is  "embellished  with  a  head  of  Jesus" 
— a  conventional  relig-ious  picture.  Huttman's  opinions  may  be  divined 
from  the  last  sentence  of  his  preface,  alluding-  to  "  the  hig-h  pretentions 
and  inflated  stile  of  the  lives  of  Christ  which  issue  periodically  from  the 
Eng;lish  press." 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  329 

publishing  it  at  Edinburgh  in  1799,  and  reprinting  it  in 
London  in  1813.  For  the  second  issue  he  was  prose- 
cuted, fined  ^200,  and  imprisoned  for  two  years  in 
Newgate.  Robert  Wedderburn,  a  mulatto  calling  him- 
self "  the  Rev.,"  in  reality  a  superannuated  journeyman 
tailor  who  officiated  in  Hopkins  Street  Unitarian  Chapel, 
London,  was  in  1820  sentenced  to  two  years'  imprison- 
ment in  Dorchester  Jail  for  a  "  blasphemous  libel " 
contained  in  one  of  his  pulpit  discourses.  His  Letters 
to  the  Rev.  Solomon  Herschell  (the  Jewish  Chief  Rabbi) 
and  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  show  a  happy  vein 
of  orderly  irony  and  not  a  little  learning,  despite  his 
profession  of  apostolic  ignorance  ;  and  at  the  trial  the 
judge  admitted  his  defence  to  be  "  exceedingly  well 
drawn  up."  His  publications  naturally  received  a  new 
impetus,  and  passed  to  a  more  drastic  order  of  mockery. 
As  the  years  went  on,  the  persecution  in  England  grew 
still  fiercer;  but  it  was  met  with  a  stubborn  hardihood 
which  wore  out  even  the  malice  of  piety.  One  of  the 
worst  features  of  the  religious  crusade  was  that  it 
affected  to  attack  not  unbelief  but  "vice,"  such  being 
the  plea  on  which  Wilberforce  and  others  prose- 
cuted, during  a  period  of  more  than  twenty  years, 
the  publishers  and  booksellers  who  issued  the  works 
of  Paine.'  But  even  that  dissembling  device  did  not 
ultimately  avail.  A  name  not  to  be  forgotten  by 
those  who  value  obscure  service  to  human  freedom 
is  that  of  Richard  Carlile,  who  between  1819  and 
1835  underwent  nine  years'  imprisonment  in  his 
unyielding  struggle  for  the  freedom  of  the  Press,  of 
thought,  and  of  speech.^  John  Clarke,  an  ex-Methodist, 
became  one  of  Carlile's  shopmen,  was  tried  in  1824  for 
selling   one    of  his    publications,  and   "  after  a  spirited 

'   Cp.  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  208-9. 

-  See  Harriet  Martineau's  History  of  the  Peace,  ed.  1877,  ii,  87,  and  Mrs. 
Carlile  Campbell's  Tlie  Battle  of  the  Press  (Bonner,  1899)  passim,  as  to 
the  treatment  of  those  who  acted  as  Carlile's  shopmen.  \\'omcn  were 
imprisoned  as  well  as  men — e.g..  Sl'sanna  Wright,  as  to  whom  see 
Wheeler's  Dictionary,  and  last  ref.  Carlile's  wife  and  sister  were  like- 
wise imprisoned  with  him  ;  and  over  twenty  volunteer  shopmen  in  all 
went  to  jail. 


330  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  iqth  CENTURY 

defence,  in  which  he  read  many  of  the  worst  passages 
of  the  Bible,"  was  sentenced  to  three  years'  imprison- 
ment, and  to  find  securities  for  good  behaviour  during 
life.  The  latter  disability  he  effectively  anticipated  by 
writing,  while  in  prison,  A  Critical  Review  of  the  Life^ 
Character,  and  Miracles  of  Jesus,  wherein  Christian 
feelings  were  treated  as  Christians  had  treated  the 
feelings  of  freethinkers,  with  a  much  more  destructive 
result.  Published  first,  strangely  enough,  in  the  New- 
gate Magazine,  it  was  republished  in  1825  and  1839, 
with  impunity.  Thus  did  a  brutal  bigotry  bring  upon 
itself  ever  a  deadlier  retaliation,  till  it  sickened  of  the 
contest.  Those  who  threw  up  the  struggle  on  the 
orthodox  side  declaimed  as  before  about  the  tone  of  the 
unbeliever's  attack,  failing  to  read  the  plain  lesson  that, 
while  noisy  bigotry  deterred  from  utterance  all  the 
gentler  and  more  sympathetic  spirits  on  the  side  of 
reason,  the  work  of  reason  could  be  done  onlv  bv  the 
harder  natures,  which  gave  back  blow  for  blow  and 
insult  for  insult,  rejoicing  in  the  encounter.  Thus 
championed,  freethought  could  not  be  crushed.  The 
propagandist  and  publishing  work  done  by  Carlile 
was  carried  on  diversely  by  such  free  lances  as 
Robert  Taylor  (ex -clergyman,  author  of  the 
Diegesis,  1829,  and  The  DeviTs  Pulpit,  1830),  Charles 
Southwell  (1814-1860),  and  William  Hone,'  who 
ultimately  became  an  independent  preacher.  Southwell, 
a  disciple  of  Robert  Owen,  who  edited  Tlie  Oracle  of 
Reason,  was  imprisoned  for  a  year  in  1840  for  publishing 
in  that  journal  an  article  entitled  "  The  Jew  Book  ";  and 
was  succeeded  in  the  editorship  by  George  Jacob 
HoLYOAKE  (181 7-1906),  another  Owenite  missionary, 
who  met  a  similar  sentence  ;  whereafter  George  Adams 
and  his  wife,  who  continued  to  publish  the  journal,  were 

'  Hone's  most  important  service  to  popular  culture  was  his  issue  of  the 
Apocryphal  Neiv  Tcstiu/ic/if, which,  by  coordinatint^  work  of  the  same  kind, 
g'ave  a  fresh  scientific  basis  to  the  popular  criticism  of  the  Gospel  history. 
As  to  his  famous  trial  for  blasphemy  on  the  score  of  his  having-  published 
certain  parodies,  political  in  intention,  see  B.  I,  ch.  x  (by  Knig-ht)  of 
Harriet  Martineau's  History  of  the  Peace. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  331 


imprisoned  in  turn.  Matilda  Roalfe  and  Mrs.  Emma 
Martin  about  the  same  period  underwent  imprisonment 
for  like  causes.'  In  this  fashion,  by  the  steady  courajre 
of  a  much-enduring  band  of  men  and  women,  was  set  on 
foot  a  systematic  Secularist  propaganda — the  name 
having  relation  to  the  term  "Secularism,"  coined  by 
Mr.  Holyoake. 

In  this  evolution  political  activities  played  an  im- 
portant part.  Henry  Hetherington  (i 792-1849),  the 
strenuous  democrat  who  in  1830  began  the  trade  union 
movement,  and  so  became  the  founder  of  Chartism, 
fought  for  the  right  of  publication  in  matters  of  free- 
thought  as  in  politics.  After  undergoing  two  imprison- 
ments of  six  months  each  (1832),  and  carrying  on  for 
three  and  a  half  years  the  struggle  for  an  untaxed  press, 
which  ended  in  his  victory  (1834),  he  was  in  1840 
indicted  for  publishing  Haslam's  Letters  to  the  Clergy 
of  all  Denominations^  a  freethinking  criticism  of  Old 
Testament  morality.  He  defended  himself  so  ably  that 
Lord  Denman,  the  judge,  confessed  to  have  "  listened 
with  feelings  of  great  interest  and  sentiments  of  respect 
too,"  and  Justice  Talfourd  later  spoke  of  it  as  marked 
by  "  great  propriety  and  talent."  Nevertheless,  he  was 
punished  by  four  months'  imprisonment.-  In  the 
following  year,  on  the  advice  of  Francis  Place,  he 
brought  a  test  prosecution  for  blasphemy  against 
Moxon,  the  poet-publisher,  for  issuing  Shelley's  com- 
plete works,  including  Queen  Mah.  Talfourd,  then 
Serjeant,  defended  Moxon,  and  pleaded  that  there 
"  must  be  some  alteration  of  the  law,  or  some  restriction 
of  the  right  to  put  it  in  action  ";  but  the  jury  were 
impartial  enough  to  find  the  publisher  guilty,  though  he 
received  no  punishment. ^  Among  other  works  pub- 
lished  by  Hetherington  was  one  entitled  A  Hunt  after 


'  Holyoake,  >S/;v/>'  Years  of  an  Agitator's  Life,  i,  109-110.  See  p.  iii 
as  to  other  cases. 

^  Art.  by  G.  J.  Holyoake  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog.  Cp.  Holyoake's 
Sixty  Years  of  an  Agitator's  Life,  per  index. 

3  Articles  in  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 


332  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

the  Devil,  "by  Dr.  P.  Y."  (really  by  Lieutenant 
Lecount),  in  which  the  story  of  Noah's  ark  was  subjected 
to  a  destructive  criticism.' 

2.  Mr.  Holyoake  had  been  a  missionary  and  martyr  in 
the  movement  of  Socialism  set  up  by  Robert  Owex, 
whose  teaching,  essentially  scientific  on  its  psychological 
or  philosophical  side,  was  the  first  effort  to  give  syste- 
matic effect  to  democratic  ideals  by  organising  industry. 
It  was  in  the  discussions  of  the  "Association  of  all 
Classes  of  all  Nations,"  formed  by  Owen  in  1835, 
that  the  word  "Socialism"  first  became  current.^ 
Owen  was  a  freethinker  in  all  things  y  and  his  whole 
movement  was  so  penetrated  by  an  anti-theological  spirit 
that  the  clergy  as  a  rule  became  its  bitter  enemies,  though 
such  publicists  as  Macaulay  and  John  Mill  also  com- 
bined with  them  in  scouting  it  on  political  and  economic 
grounds.  None  the  less,  "  his  secularistic  teaching 
gained  such  influence  among  the  working  classes  as  to 
give  occasion  for  the  statement  in  the  Westminster 
Review  (1839)  that  his  principles  were  the  actual  creed 
of  a  great  portion  of  them."-^  To  a  considerable  extent 
it  was  furthered  by  the  popular  deistic  philosophy  of 
George  and  Andrew  Combe,  which  then  had  a  great 
vogue  ;5  and  by  the  implications  of  phrenology,  then 
also  in  its  most  scientific  and  progressive  stage. 
When,  for  various  reasons,  Owen's  movement  dis- 
solved, the  freethinking  element  seems  to  have  been 
absorbed  in  the  secular  party,  while  the  others  appear 
to  have  gone  in  part  to  build  up  the  movement  of 
Co-operation.  The  imprisonment  of  Mr.  Holyoake 
(1842)  for  six  months,  on  a  trifling  charge  of 
blasphemy,   is   an   illustration    of    the    brutal    spirit    of 

'  Holyoake,  Sixty  Years,  i,  47. 

-  Kirkup,  History  of  Socialism,  1892,  p.  64. 

3  '*  From  an  early  ag-e  he  had  lost  all  belief  in  the  prevailing  forms  of 
religion  "  (Kirkup,  p.  59). 

■»  Kirkup,  as  cited,  p.  64. 

=  Of  George  Combe's  Constitution  o/"yl/rt;/,  a  deistic  work,  over  50,000 
copies  were  sold  in  Britain  within  twelve  3ears,  and  10,000  in  America. 
Advt.  to  4th  ed.  1839. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  333 

public  orthodoxy  at  the  time/  Where  bigotry  could 
thus  only  injure  and  oppress  without  suppressing  heresy, 
it  stimulated  resistance  ;  and  the  result  of  the  stimulus 
was  the  founding  of  a  Secular  Society  in  1852.  Six 
years  later  there  was  elected  to  the  presidency  of  the 
London  Society  of  that  name  the  young  Charles 
Bradlaugh,  one  of  the  greatest  orators  of  his  age,  and 
one  of  the  most  powerful  personalities  ever  associated 
with  a  progressive  movement.  A  personal  admirer  of 
Owen,  he  never  accepted  his  social  polity,  but  was  at 
all  times  the  most  zealous  of  democratic  reformers. 
Thenceforward  the  working  masses  in  England  were 
in  large  part  kept  in  touch  with  a  freethought  which 
drew  on  the  results  of  the  scientific  and  scholarly 
research  of  the  time,  and  wielded  a  dialectic  of  which 
trained  opponents  confessed  the  power.  ^ 

The  inspiration  and  the  instruction  of  the  popular 
movement  thus  maintained  were  at  once  literary, 
scientific,  ethical,  historical,  scholarly,  and  philosophic. 
Shelley  was  its  poet  ;  Voltaire  its  story-teller  ;  and 
Gibbon  its  favourite  historian.  In  philosophy,  Brad- 
laugh  learned  less  from  Hume  than  from  Spinoza  ;  in 
Biblical  criticism — himself  possessing  a  working  know- 
ledge of  Hebrew — he  collated  all  the  work  of  English 
and  French  specialists,  down  to  and  including  Colenso, 
applying  all  the  while  to  the  consecrated  record  the 
merciless  tests  of  a  consistent  ethic.  At  the  same  time, 
the  whole  battery  of  argument  from  the  natural  sciences 
was  turned  against  traditionalism  and  supernaturalism, 
alike  in  the  lectures  of  Bradlaugh  and  the  other  speakers 
of  his  party,  and  in  the  pages  of  his  journal,  The 
National  Reformer.  The  general  outcome  was  an 
unprecedented  diffusion  of  critical  thought  among  the 
English  masses,  and  a  proportionate  antagonism  to  those 
who  had  wrought  such  a  result.  When,  therefore,  Brad- 
laugh, as  deeply  concerned  for  political  as  for  intellectual 

'  See  the  details  in  his  Last  Trial  by  Jury  for  Atheism  in  England. 
-  See  Professor  Flint's   tribute  to  the  reasoning  power  of  Bradlaugfh 
and  Holyoake  in  his  Anti-Theistic  Theories,  4th  ed.  pp.  518-519. 


334  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igfh  CENTURY 

righteousness,  set  himself  to  the  task  of  entering 
Parliament,  he  commenced  a  struggle  which  shortened 
his  life,  though  it  promoted  his  main  objects.  Not  till 
after  a  series  of  electoral  contests  extending  over  twelve 
years  was  he  elected  for  Northampton  in  1880;  and  the 
House  of  Commons  in  a  manner  enacted  afresh  the  long 
resistance  made  to  him  in  that  city.  When,  however, 
on  his  election  in  1880,  the  Conservative  Opposition 
began  the  historic  proceedings  over  the  Oath  question, 
they  probably  did  even  -more  to  deepen  and  diffuse  the 
popular  freethought  movement  than  Bradlaugh  himself 
had  done  in  the  whole  of  his  previous  career.  The 
process  was  furthered  by  the  policy  of  prosecuting  and 
imprisoning  Mr.  G.  W.  Foote,  editor  oi  th.Q  Freethinker^ 
under  the  Blasphemy  Laws — a  course  not  directly 
ventured  on  as  against  Bradlaugh,  though  it  was  sought 
to  connect  him  with  the  publication  of  Mr.  Foote's 
journal. 

To  this  day,  it  is  common  to  give  a  false  account  of 
the  origin  of  the  episode,  representing  Bradlaugh  as 
having  "forced"  his  opinions  on  the  attention  of  the 
House.  Rather  he  strove  unduly  to  avoid  wounding 
religious  feeling.  Wont  to  make  affirmation  by  law  in 
the  courts  of  justice,  he  felt  that  it  would  be  unseemly 
on  his  part  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  if  he  could 
legally  affirm.  On  this  point  he  expressly  consulted 
the  law  officers  of  the  Crown,  and  they  gave  the  opinion 
that  he  had  the  legal  right,  which  was  his  own  belief. 
The  faction  called  the  "fourth  party,"  however^  saw  an 
opportunity  to  embarrass  the  Gladstone  Government  by 
challenging  the  act,  and  thus  arose  the  protracted 
struggle.  Only  when  a  committee  of  the  House 
decided  that  he  could  not  affirm  did  Bradlaugh  propose 
to  take  the  oath,  in  order  to  take  his  seat. 

The  pretence  of  zeal  for  religion,  made  by  the 
politicians  who  had  raised  the  issue,  was  known  by  all 
men  to  be  the  merest  hypocrisy.  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill,  who  distinguished  himself  by  insisting  on 
the  moral   necessity  for  a   belief   in  "  some  divinity  or 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  335 

Other,"  is  recorded  to  have  professed  a  special  esteem  for 
Mr.  John  Morley,  a  Positivist.'  The  whole  procedure,  in 
Parliament  and  out,  was  so  visibly  that  of  the  lowest 
political  malice,  exploiting  the  crudest  religious  intoler- 
ance, that  it  turned  into  active  freethinkers  many  who  had 
before  been  only  passive  doubters,  and  raised  the  secu- 
larist party  to  an  intensity  of  zeal  never  before  seen.  At 
no  period  in  modern  British  history  had  there  been 
so  constant  and  so  keen  a  platform  propaganda  of 
unbelief;  so  unsparing  an  indictment  of  Christian 
doctrine,  history,  and  practice  ;  such  contemptuous 
rebuttal  of  every  Christian  pretension  ;  such  asperity  of 
spirit  against  the  creed  which  was  once  more  being  cham- 
pioned by  chicanery,  calumny,  and  injustice.  In^those 
five  years  of  indignant  warfare  were  sown  the  seeds  of  a 
more  abundant  growth  of  rationalism  than  had  ever 
before  been  known  in  the  British  Islands.  When 
Bradlaugh  at  length  took  the  oath  and  his  seat  in  1886, 
under  a  ruling  of  the  Speaker  which  stultified  the  whole 
action  of  the  Speaker  and  majorities  of  the  previous 
Parliament,  and  no  less  that  of  the  Law  Courts,  straight- 
forward freethought  stood  three-fold  stronger  in  England 
than  in  any  previous  generation.  Apart  from  their 
educative  work,  the  struggles  and  sufferings  of  the 
secularist  leaders  had  now  secured  for  Great  Britain  the 
abolition  within  one  generation  of  the  old  burden  of 
suretyship  on  newspapers,  and  of  the  disabilities  of  non- 
theistic  witnesses;-  the  freedom  of  public  meeting  in  the 
London  parks  ;  the  right  of  avowed  atheists  to  sit  in 
Parliament  (Bradlaugh  having  secured  in  1888  their  title 
to  make  affirmation  instead  of  oath)  ;  and  the  virtual 
discredit  of  the  Blasphemy  Laws  as  such.  It  is  probable 
also  that  the  treatment  meted  out  to  Mrs.  Besant  marked 
the  end  of  another  form  of  tyrannous  outrage,  already 
made  historic  in  the  case  of  Shelley.  Secured  the 
custody  of  her  children  under  a  marital  deed  of  separation, 

'  After  Bradlaugfh  had  secured  his  seat,  the  noble  lord,  when  leader 
of  the  House,  even  soug-ht  his  society. 

^  See  ;\Irs.  Bradlaug-h  Bonner's  Charles  Bradlaugh,  i,  149,  288-9. 


336  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igih  CENTURY 

she  was  deprived  of  it  at  law  (1879)  on  her  avowal 
of  atheistic  opinions,  with  the  result  that  her  influence 
as  a  propagandist  was  immensely  increased. 

3.  Only  in  the  United  States  has  the  public  lecture 
platform  been  made  a  means  of  propaganda  to  anything 
like  the  extent  seen  in  Britain  ;  and  the  greatest  part  of 
the  work  in  the  States  has  thus  far  been  done  by  the 
late  Colonel  Ingersoll,  the  leading  American  orator  of 
the  last  generation,  and  the  most  widely  influential 
platform  propagandist  of  the  last  century.  No  other 
single  freethinker,  it  is  believed,  has  reached  such  an 
audience  by  public  speech.  In  other  countries,  popular 
freethought  has  been  spread,  as  apart  from  books,  mainly 
by  pamphlets  and  journalism,  and,  in  the  Latin  countries, 
by  the  organisation  of  freemasonry,  which  is  there 
normally  anti-clerical.  In  France,  the  movement  of 
Fourier  (i 772-1837)  may  have  counted  for  something 
as  organising  the  secular  spirit  among  the  workers  in 
the  period  of  the  monarchic  and  Catholic  reaction  ;  but 
at  no  time  was  the  proletariat  of  Paris  otherwise  than 
largely  Voltairean  after  the  Revolution,  of  which  one  of 
the  great  services  (carried  on  by  Napoleon)  was  an 
improvement  in  popular  education.  The  new  non- 
Christian  systems  of  Saint-Simon'  (i 760-1 823)  and 
AuGUSTE  CoMTE  (1798-1857)  never  took  any  practical 
hold  among  them  ;  but  throughout  the  century  they 
have  been  fully  the  most  freethinking  working-class 
population  in  the  world.  During  the  period  of  reaction 
after  the  restoration,  numerous  editions  of  Volney's 
Raines  and  of  the  Abrege^  of  Dupuis's  Origine  de  tons 
les  Cidtes  served  to  maintain  among  the  more  intelligent 
an  almost  scientific  rationalism,  which  can  hardly  be 
said  to  be  improved  on  by  such  historiography  as  that 
of  Renan's  Vie  de  Jesus. 

■  Saint-Simon,  who  proposed  a  "  new  Christianity,"  expressly  guarded 
against  direct  appeals  to  the  people.  See  Weil,  Sanif-Siiiioii  ef  son  CEuvre, 
1894,  p.  19.3.  As  to  the  Saint-Simonian  sect,  see  an  interesting  testimony 
b}'  Renan,  Les  Apofrcs,  p.  148. 

=  Louis  Philippe  sought  to  suppress  this  book,  of  which  many  editions 
had  appeared  before  1830.     See  Blanco  White's  Life,  1845,  •')  '^S- 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  337 

In  Other  Catholic  countries  the  course  of  popular 
culture  in  the  first  half  of  the  century  was  not  greatly 
dissimilar  to  that  seen  in  France,  though  less  rapid  and 
expansive.  Thus  we  find  the  Spanish  Inquisitor- 
General  in  1815  declaring  that  "all  the  world  sees  with 
horror  the  rapid  progress  of  unbelief,"  and  denouncing 
"the  errors  and  the  newand  dangerous  doctrines"  which 
have  passed  from  other  countries  to  Spain.'  This 
evolution  was  to  some  extent  checked  ;  but  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  century,  especially  in  the  last  twenty  years, 
freethinking  journalism  has  counted  for  much  in  the 
most  Catholic  parts  of  Southern  Europe.  The  influence 
of  such  journals  is  to  be  measured  not  by  their  circula- 
tion, which  is  never  great,  but  by  their  keeping  up  a 
habit  of  more  or  less  instructed  freethinking  among 
readers,  to  many  of  whom  the  instruction  is  not  other- 
wise easily  accessible.  Probably  the  least  ambitious  of 
them  is  an  intellectual  force  of  a  higher  order  than  the 
highest  grade  of  popular  religious  journalism  ;  while 
some  of  the  stronger,  as  De  Dageraad  of  Amsterdam, 
have  ranked  as  high-class  serious  reviews.  In  the  more 
free  and  progressive  countries,  however,  freethought 
affects  all  periodical  literature  ;  and  in  France  it  partly 
permeates  the  ordinary  newspapers.  In  England,  where 
a  series  of  monthly  or  weekly  publications  of  an  emphati- 
cally freethinking  sort  has  been  nearly  continuous 
from  about  1840,''  new  ones  rising  in  place  of  those 
which  succumbed  to  the  commercial  difficulties,  such 
periodicals  suffer  an  economic  pinch  in  that  they  cannot 
hope  for  much  income  from  advertisements,  which  are 
the  chief  sustenance  of  popular  journals  and  magazines. 
The  same  law  holds  elsewhere  ;  but  in  England  and 
America  the  high-priced  reviews  have  been  gradually 
opened  to  rationalistic  articles,  the  way  being  led  by  the 


^  Llorente,  Hist.  crit.  de  I' Inquisition  de  V Espagne,  ze  ^dit.  iv,  153. 

-  Before  1840  the  popular  freethoug^ht  propaganda  had  been  partly 
carried  on  under  cover  of  Radicalism,  as  in  Carlile's  Republican, 
and  Lion,  and  in  publications  of  William  Hone.  Cp.  H.  B.  Wilson's 
article  "  The  National  Church,"  in  Essays  and  Reviews,  9th  ed.  p.  152. 

VOL   II  Z 


338  FREETHOUGHT  IX  THE  Kjth  CENTURY 

English    Westminster  Review"^  and  Fortnightly  Review, 
both  founded  with  an  eye  to  freer  discussion. 

Among  the  earlier  freethinking-  periodicals  may  be  noted  The 
Republican,  1819-26  (edited  by  Carlile)  ;  The  Deisfs  Magazine, 
1820;  The  Lion,  1828  (Carlile) ;  7'/z6' /^/'o/«/>^'r,  1830  (Carlile)  ;  The 
Grt?<«//^/,  1833  (Carlile);  The  Atheist  and  Reptiblican,  1841-2;  The 
Blasphemer,  1842  ;  The  Oracle  of  Reason  (founded  by  Southwell), 
1842,  etc.  ;  The  Reasoner  and  Herald  of  Progress  (largely  con- 
ducted by  Mr.  Holyoake),  1846-1861  ;  Cooper'' s  Journal ;  or,  unfet- 
tered Thinker,  etc.,  1850,  etc.;  The  Movement,  1843  ;  The  Free- 
thinker's Infortnation  forthe  People  (undated  :  after  1840)  ;  Free- 
thinker's Magazine,  1850,  etc.  ;  London  Investigator,  1854,  etc. 
Mr.  "Brixdhiug^WsNational  Reformer,  begun  in  i860,  lasted  till  1893. 
Mr.  Yoote's  Freethinker,  begun  in  1881,  still  subsists.  Various 
freethinking  monthlies  have  risen  and  fallen  since  1880 — 
e.g..  Our  Corner,  edited  by  Mrs.  Besant,  1883-88  ;  The 
Liberal  and  Progress,  edited  by  Mr.  Foote,  1879-87;  the 
Free  Review,  transformed  into  the  University  Magazine,  1893- 
i8g8.  The  Reformer,  a  monthly,  edited  by  Mrs.  Bradlaugh 
Bonner,  subsisted  from  1897  to  1904.  The  Literary  Guide,  which 
began  as  a  small  sheet  in  1885,  flourishes.  Recently,  a  popular 
Socialist  journal,  The  Clarion,  has  declared  for  rationalism 
through  the  pen  of  its  editor,  Mr.  R.  Blatchford  ("  Nunquam"), 
whose  polemic  has  caused  much  contro\ersy.  For  a  generation 
back,  further,  rationalistic  essays  have  appeared  from  time  to 
time  not  onlv  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  (founded  by  G.  H. 
Lewes,  and  long  edited  by  Mr.  John  Morley,  much  of  whose 
writing  on  the  French  philosophes  appeared  in  its  pages),  but  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  wherein  was  carried  on,  for  instance, 
the  famous  controversy  between  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Professor 
Huxley.  Latterly,  the  Independent  Review  has  given  space  to 
a  number  of  outspoken  criticisms  of  current  religion  ;  and  in 
the  Hibbert  Journal  some  opening  is  given  to  advanced  views. 

4.  In  Germany  the  relative  selectness  of  culture,  the 
comparative  aloofness  of  the  "  enlightened "  from  the 
mass  of  the  people,  made  possible  after  the  War  of 
Independence  a  certain  pietistic  reaction,  in  the  absence 
of  any  popular  propagandist  machinery  or  purpose  on 
the  side  of  the  rationalists.  In  the  opinion  of  an  evan- 
gelical  authority,   at  the    beginning  of  the    nineteenth 

'  Described  as  "  our  chief  atheistic  org-an  "  by  the  late  Professor 
F.  W.  Newman  "  because  Dr.  James  Martineau  declined  to  continue 
writing;;   for  it,    because  it   interpolated   atheistical   articles    between   his 

theistic  articles  "  ( Contributions to  tJie  early  history  of  the  late  Cardinal 

Newman,  1891,  p.   103).      The  review  was  for  a  time  edited  by  J.  S.  Mill, 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  339 


century,  "  through  modern  Q,n\\g\\X.^nmQ.x\t  {Aiifkldriing) 
the   people   had   become  indifferent  to   the  church  ;  the 
Bible  was  regarded  as  a  merely  human  book,  the  Saviour 
merely  as  a  person  who  had  lived  and  taught  long  ago, 
not  as  one  whose  almighty  presence  is  with  his  people 
still."'     According  to  the  same  authority,   "before  the 
war,  the  indifference  to  the  word  of  God  which  prevailed 
among  the  upper  classes  had  penetrated  to  the  lower ; 
but  after  it,  a  desire  for  the  Scriptures  was  everywhere 
felt."-    A  pietistic  movement  had,  however, begun  during 
the  period  of  the  French  ascendancy  y-  and  inasmuch  as 
the  freethinking  of  the  previous  generation  had  been  in 
large  part  associated  with  French  opinion,  it  was  natural 
that  on  this  side  anti-French  feeling  should  promote  a 
reversion  to  older  and  more  "  national  "  forms  of  feeling. 
Thus  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon  the  tone  of  the  students 
who  had   fought  in  the  war  seems  to  have  been  more 
religious  than  that  of  previous  years."^     Inasmuch,  how- 
ever, as  the  "  enlightenment"  of  the  scholarly  class  was 
maintained,  and  applied  anew  to  critical  problems,  the 
religious  revival  did  not  turn  back  the  course  of  progress.^ 
Alongside  of  the   pietistic    reaction    of    the    Liberation 
period  there  went  on  an  open  ecclesiastical  strife,  dating 
from  an  anti-rationalist  declaration  by  the  Court  preacher 
Reinhard   at  Dresden  in  181 1,^  between  the  rationalists 
or  "  Friends  of  Light  "  and  the  Scripturalists  of  the  old 
school  ;  and   the  effect  was  a  general   disintegration  of 
orthodoxy,  despite,  or  it  may  be  largely  in  virtue  of,  the 
governmental    policy    of    rewarding    the     Pietists    and 
discouraging    their    opponents    in    the    way    of    official 

'  Pastor  W.  Baiir,  Hamburg;,  Religious  Life  in  Germany  during  the 
Wars  of  Independence,  Eng-.  trans.   1872,  p.  41. 

-  Id.  p.  481.  3  See  the  same  m oXwvaQ, passim. 

"•  Karl  von  Raumer,  Contrib.  to  the  Hist,  of  the  German  Universities, 
Eng.  trans.  1859,  p.  79.  The  intellectual  tone  of  W.  Baur  and  K.  von 
Raumer  certainly  protects  them  from  any  charge  of  "  enlightenment. " 

=  "  When  the  third  centenary  commemoration,  in  1817,  of  the  Reforma- 
tion approached,  the  Prussian  people  were  in  a  state  of  stolid  indifference, 
apparently,  on  religious  matters  "  (Laing,  Azotes  of  a  Traveler,  1842, 
p.  iSi). 

*  C.  H.  Cotterill,  Relig.  Movements  of  Germany  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  1849,  pp.  39-40. 


340  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

appointments.'  The  Prussian  measure  (i8i 7)  of  forcibly 
uniting  the  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic  churches,  with  a 
neutral  sacramental  ritual  in  which  the  eucharist  was 
treated  as  a  historical  commemoration,  tended  to  the 
same  consequences,  though  it  also  revived  old  Lutheran 
zeal  ;-  and  when  the  new  revolutionary  movement  broke 
out  in  1848,  popular  feeling  was  substantially  non- 
religious.  "  In  the  South  of  Germany  especially,  the 
conflict  of  political  opinions  and  revolutionary  tendencies 
produced,  in  the  first  instance,  an  entire  prostration  of 
religious  sentiment."  The  bulk  of  society  showed  entire 
indifference  to  worship,  the  churches  being  everywhere 
deserted  ;  and  "  atheism  was  openly  avowed,  and  Chris- 
tianity ridiculed  as  the  invention  of  priestcraft.  "^  One 
result  was  a  desperate  effort  of  the  clergy  to  "  effect  a 
union  among  all  who  retained  any  measure  of  Christian 
belief,  in  order  to  raise  up  their  national  religion  and 
faith  from  the  lowest  state  into  which  it  has  ever  fallen 
since  the  French  Revolution." 

But  the  clerical  effort  evoked  a  counter  effort.  Already, 
in  1846,  official  interference  with  freedom  of  utterance 
led  to  the  formation  of  a  "  free  religious  "  society  by  Dr. 
Rupp,  of  Konigsberg,  one  of  the  "Friends  of  Light"  in 
the  State  church  ;  and  he  was  followed  by  Wislicenus, 
of  Halle,  a  Hegelian,  and  by  Uhlich,  of  Magdeburg."^ 
As  a  result  of  the  determined  pressure,  social  and  official, 
which  ensued  on  the  collapse  of  the  revolution  of  1848, 
these  societies  failed  to  develop  on  the  scale  of  their 
beginnings  ;  and  that  of  Magdeburg,  which  at  the 
outset  had  7,000  members,  has  now  only  500  ;  though 
that  of  Berlin  has  nearly  4,000. ^  There  is  further  a 
Freidenker  Bund,,  with  branches  in  many  towns  ;  and 
the  two  organisations,  with  their  total  membership  of 
some  fifty  thousand,  may  be  held  to  represent  the 
militant  side  of  popular  freethought  in  Germany.  This, 
however,  constitutes  only  a  fraction  of  the  total  amount 

'  Id.  pp.  27-28,  41-42.  ^  Cp.  Laing-,  as  cited,  pp.  206-7,211. 

3  Cotterill,  as  cited.  '•  Cotterill,  as  cited,  pp.  43-47. 

5  Rapport  de  Ida  Altmann,  in  Almanack  de  Libre  Pens^e,  1906,  p.  20. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  341 

of  passive  rationalism.  In  no  country,  perhaps,  is 
there  a  larger  measure  of  enlightenment  in  the  working 
class  ;  and  the  ostensible  force  of  orthodoxy  among  the 
official  and  conformist  middle  class  is  illusory  in  the 
extreme.  The  German  police  laws  put  a  rigid  check 
on  all  manner  of  platform  and  press  propaganda  which 
could  be  indicted  as  hurting  the  feelings  of  religious 
people  ;  so  that  a  jest  at  the  Holy  Coat  of  Treves  can 
send  a  journalist  to  jail,  and  the  platform  work  of  the 
militant  societies  is  closely  trammelled.  Yet  there  are 
over  a  dozen  journals  which  so  far  as  may  be  take  the 
freethought  side  ;'  and  the  whole  stress  of  Bismarckian 
reaction  and  of  official  orthodoxy  under  the  present 
Kaiser  has  never  availed  to  make  the  tone  of  popular 
thought  pietistic.  Karl  Marx,  the  prophet  of  the 
German  Socialist  movement  (1818-1883),  laid  it  down 
as  part  of  its  mission  "  to  free  consciousness  from  the 
religious  spectre  ;"  and  his  two  most  influential  followers 
in  Germany,  Bebel  and  Liebknecht,  have  been 
avowed  atheists,  the  former  even  going  so  far  as  to  avow 
officially  in  the  Reichstag  that  "the  aim  of  our  party  is 
on  the  political  plane  the  republican  form  of  State  ;  on 
the  economic.  Socialism  ;  and  on  the  plane  Avhich  we 
term  the  religious,  atheism  ;"^  though  the  party  attempts 
no  propaganda  of  the  latter  order.  "Christianity  and 
Social-Democracy,"  says  Bebel  again,  "are  opposed  as 
fire  and  water.  "^ 

Some  index  to  the  amount  of  popular  freethought 
that  normally  exists  under  the  surface  in  Germany  is 
furnished,  further,  by  the  strength  of  the  German  free- 
thought   movement  in  the  United  States,  where,  despite 

'  The  principal  are  :  Das  freie  Wort  and  Frankfurter  Zeitung,  Frank- 
fort-on-Main  ;  Der  Freidenker,  Friedrichshag'en,  near  Berlin  ;  Derfrci- 
religiUscs  Sonntagsblatt,  Breslau  ;  Die  freie  Geineindc,  Magdeburjaf ;  Der 
Atheist,  Nuremberg-  ;  Menscheiitum,  Gotha  ;  Vossische  Zeitung,  Berlin  ; 
Berliner  Volksseitung,  Berlin;  For7C'rt>/5 (Socialist),  Berlin;  Weser Zeitung, 
Bremen  ;  Hartungsche  Zeitung,  Konigsberg-  ;  Kolnische  Zeitung, 
Colog-ne. 

^  Studemund,   Der   nioderne  Unglaubc  in  den  unteren  Stiinden,    1901, 
p.  14. 

3   Id.  p.  22. 


342  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


the  tendency  to  the  adoption  of  the  common  speech, 
there  grew  up  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  many  German  freethinking  societies,  a  German 
federation  of  atheists,  and  a  vigorous  popular  organ, 
Der  Freidenker. 

5.   "  Free-religious  "societies,  such  as  have  been  noted 
in   Germany,  may  be   rated  as  forms  of  moderate  free- 
thought  propaganda,  and  are  to  be  found  in  all  Protestant 
countries,  with  all  shades  of  development.    A  movement 
of  the  kind  has  existed   for  a   number  of  years  back  in 
America,  in  the  New  England  States  and  elsewhere,  and 
may  be  held  to  represent  a  theistic  or  agnostic  thought 
too  advanced  to  adhere  even  to  the  Unitarianism  which 
during   the    two    middle   quarters   of    the    century   was 
perhaps  the  predominant  creed   in  New  England.     One 
of  the  best  types  of  such  a  gradual  and  peaceful  evolu- 
tion is  the  South  Place  Institute  (formerly  "  Chapel  ")  of 
London,   where,    under  the  famous    orator  W.  J.  Fox, 
nominally   a    Unitarian,   there    was    preached    between 
1824  and    1852  a  theism  tending  to  pantheism,  perhaps 
traceable  to  elements  in  the  doctrine  of  Priestley,  and 
passed  on  by  Mr.  Fox  to  Robert  Browning.'     In  1864 
the   charge    passed    to    Moncure    D.   Conway,    under 
whom  the  congregation  quietly  advanced  during  twenty 
years  from  Unitarianism  to  a  non-scriptural  rationalism, 
embracing   the    shades    of    philosophic    theism,   agnos- 
ticism, and  anti-theism.     The  Institute  then  became  an 
open  platform  for  rationalist  and  non-theological  ethics, 
and  social  and  historical  teaching,  and  it  now  stands  as 
an  "  Ethical  Society  "  in  touch  with  the  numerous  groups 
so  named  which  have  come  into  existence  in  England  in 
the  last  dozen  years,  on   lines  originally  laid   down  by 
Dr.  Felix  Adler  in  New  York.     At  the  time  of  the  present 
writing  the  English  societies  of  this  kind  number  between 
twenty  and  thirty,  the  majority  being  in  London  and  its 
environs.     Their  open  adherents,  who  are  some  thousands 

'  Cp.  Vr\e.'~X\&y,  Essay  on  tlie  First  Principles  of  Government,  2nd  ed. 
1771,  pp.  257-261,  and  Conway's  Centenary  History  of  South  Place,  pp. 
63,  77.  80. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  343 

stronor,  are  in  most  cases  non-theistic  rationalists,  and 
include  many  former  members  of  the  Secularist  move- 
ment, of  which  the  organisation  has  somewhat  dwindled. 
On  partly  similar  lines  have  been  developed  in  provincial 
towns  a  small  number  of  "  Labour  Churches,"  in  which 
the  tendency  is  to  substitute  a  rationalist  humanitarian 
ethic  for  supernaturalism  ;  and  the  same  lecturers 
frequently  speak  from  their  platforms  and  from  those  of 
Ethical  and  Secularist  societies. 

6.   Alongside  of  the  lines  of  movement  before  sketched, 
there  has  subsisted  in   England  during  the  greater  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  a  considerable  organisation  of 
Unitarianism.     The  precise  evolution  of  this  body  in  its 
incipient  stages  is  not  easily  to  be  traced.      In   England 
during  the  eighteenth  century  specific  Anti-trinitarianism 
was   not  much    in    evidence.     The    most   distinguished 
names    associated    with     the    position    were    those    of 
Lardner  and  Priestley,  of  whom  the  former,  trained  as 
a  simple  "dissenter,"  avowedly  reached  his  conclusions 
without  much  reference  to  Socinian  literature  ;'  and  the 
second,  who  was  similarly  educated,   no    less  indepen- 
dently gave  up  the  doctrines  of  the  Atonement  and  the 
Trinity,  passing  later  from   the  Arian   to  the  Socinian 
position  after  reading    Lardner's  Letter  on   the  Logos. '^ 
As  Priestley  derived   his  determinism  from   Collins, ^  it 
would  appear  that  the  deistical  movement  had  set  up  a 
general  habit  of  reasoning  which  thus  wrought  even  on 
Christians  who,  like  Lardner  and  Priestley,  undertook 
to  rebut  the  objections  of  unbelievers  to  their  faith.      It 
thus  becomes   intelligible  how,  after  a  period  in  which 
Dissent,   contemned   by    the    State    church,   learned    to 
criticise  that  church's  creed,  there  emerged  in  England 
early  in   the  nineteenth  century  a  movement  of  specific 
Unitarianism,  manifested  mainly  among  the  remaining 
churches  of  the    English   Presbyterian  body.     Such  a 
development  is  to  be  explained  by  the  relative  freedom 

'  Life  of  Lardner,  by  Dr.  Kippis,  prefixed  to  Worlts,  ed.  1835,  i,  p.  xxxii. 
'  Memoirs  of  Priestley,  1806,  pp.  30-32,  35,  57. 
3  Id.  p.  19. 


344  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igtii  CENTURA 

from  authority  enjoyed  by  dissenting  sects,  in  compen- 
sation for  their  social  disabilities.  In  the  State  church, 
as  we  saw,  there  had  been  many  traces  of  deism  among 
the  clergy  in  the  deistic  age.  In  the  freer  self-govern- 
ing churches,  especially  those  which  had  a  tradition  of 
learning  and  clerical  culture,  the  same  tendencies  could 
emerge  as  Unitarianism.'  But  inasmuch  as  the  Presby- 
terian churches  alone  had  non-dogmatic  trust  deeds, 
they  alone  made  the  transition  in  large  numbers — a  fact 
which  tells  the  whole  story  of  institutional  causation. 

When  the  heretical  preachers  of  the  Presbyterian  sect 
began  openly  to  declare  themselves  as  Unitarians,  there 
naturally  arose  a  protest  from  the  orthodox,  and  an 
attempt  was  made  to  save  from  its  new  destination 
the  property  owned  by  the  heretical  congregations. 
This  was  frustrated  by  the  Dissenters'  Chapels  Act 
of  1844,  which  gave  to  each  group  singly  the  power  to 
interpret  its  trust  in  its  own  fashion.  Thenceforward  the 
sect,  formally  founded  in  1825,  prospered  considerably, 
albeit  not  so  greatly  as  in  the  United  States.  During 
the  century,  English  Unitarianism  has  been  associated 
with  scholarship  through  such  names  as  Samuel  Sharpe, 
the  historian  of  Egypt,  and  J.  J.  Tayler  ;  and,  less 
directly,  with  philosophy  in  the  person  of  Dr.  James 
Martineau,  who,  however,  was  rather  a  coadjutor  than 
a  champion  of  the  sect.  In  the  United  States  the 
movement,  greatly  aided  to  popularity  by  the  eloquent 
humanism  of  Channing,  lost  the  prestige  of  the  name 
of  Emerson,  who  had  been  one  of  its  ministers,  by 
the  inability  of  his  congregation  to  go  the  whole  way 
with  him  in  his  opinions.  Latterly,  Unitarians  have 
been  entitled  to  say  that  the  Trinitarian  churches  are 
approximating  to  their  position.  Such  an  approach, 
however,  involves  rather  a  weakening  than  a  strength- 
ening of  the  smaller  body  ;  though  a  number  of  its 
teachers  are  to  the  full  as  bigoted  and  embittered  in 
their  propaganda  as  the  bulk  of  the  traditionally 
orthodox.     Others  adhere  to  their  ritual  practices  in  the 

'   The  penal  laws  against  anti-trinitarianism  were  repealed  in  1813. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  345 


spirit  of  use  and  wont,  as  Emerson  found  when  he 
sought  to  rationalise  in  his  own  church  the  usage  of  the 
eucharist. '  On  the  other  hand,  numbers  have  passed 
from  Unitarianism  to  thoroughgoing  rationahsm  ;  and 
some  whole  congregations,  following  more  or  less  the 
example  of  that  of  South  Place  Chapel,  have  latterly- 
reached  a  position  scarcely  distinguishable  from  that  of 
the  Ethical  Societies. 

7.  A  partly  similar  evolution  has  taken  place  among 
the  Protestant  churches  of  France,  Switzerland, 
Hungary,  and  Holland.  French  Protestantism  could 
not  but  be  intellectually  moved  by  the  intense  ferment 
of  the  Revolution;  and,  when  finally  secured  against 
active  oppression  from  the  Catholic  side,  could  not  but 
develop  an  intellectual  opposition  to  the  Catholic 
Reaction  after  1815.  As  early  as  1828  we  find  the 
Protestant  Coquerel  avowing  that  in  his  day  the 
Bourbonism  of  the  Catholic  clergy  had  revived  the  old 
anti-clericalism,  and  that  it  was  common  to  find  the 
most  high-minded  patriots  unbelievers  and  materialists.' 
But  still  more  remarkable  was  the  persistence  in  the 
Catholic  church  itself  of  deep  freethinking  currents. 
About  1830  freethinking  had  become  normal  among 
the  younger  students  at  Paris  ;3  and  the  revolution  of 
that  year  elicited  a  charter  putting  all  religions  on  an 
equality.^  Soon  the  throne  and  the  chambers  were  on  a 
footing  of  practical  hostility  to  the  church. ^  Under 
Louis  Philippe  men  dared  to  teach  in  the  College  de 
France  that  "  the  Christian  dispensation  is  but  one  link 
in    the    chain    of    divine    revelations    to    man."*"     Such 

'  Conway,  Emerson  at  Home  and  Abroad,  1883,  ch.  vii. 

^  Coquerel,  Essai  siir  I'liistoire  gdndrale  die  christianisme,  1828,  pr«^f. 

3  Dr.  Christopher  Wordsworth,  Diary  in  France,  1845,  pp.  75-77. 

■*  ••  The  miserable  and  deistical  principle  of  the  equality  of  «// religions" 
{Id.  p.  188).      Cp.  pp.  151,  153. 

5  Id.  pp.  15,  37,  45,  181,  185,  190. 

*  Id.  pp.  1 57-161.  Some  such  position  was  reached  by  Lamennais. 
Id.  p.  196.  As  to  the  general  vogue  of  rationalism  in  France  at  that 
period,  see  pp.  35,  204;  and  compare  Saisset,  Essais  siir  la  philosophic 
et  la  religion,  1845  ;  The  Progress  of  Religious  Thought  as  illustrated  in 
the  Protestant  Church  of  France,  by  Dr.  J.  R.  Beard,  1861  ;  and  Wilson's 
article  in  Essays  and  Revieivs.  As  to  the  other  countries  named,  see 
Pearson,  Infidelity,  its  Aspects,  etc.,  1853,  pp.  560-4,  575-84. 


346  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  i<jth  CENTURY 

speculation  could  not  ^o  on  in  the  Catholic  pale  without 
contagion  to  the  Protestant;  and  in  Switzerland,  always 
in  intellectual  touch  with  France  and  Germany,  the 
tendencies  which  had  been  stamped  as  Socinian  in  the 
days  of  Voltaire  reasserted  themselves  so  strongly  as  to 
provoke  fanatical  reaction.'  The  nomination  of  Strauss 
to  a  chair  of  theology  at  Zurich  by  a  Radical  Govern- 
ment in  1839  actually  gave  rise  to  a  violent  revolt, 
inflamed  and  led  by  Protestant  clergymen.  The 
Executive  Council  were  expelled,  and  a  number  of 
persons  killed  in  the  strife."  In  the  canton  of  Aargau  in 
1841,  again,  the  cry  of  "  religion  in  danger"  sufficed  to 
bring  about  a  Catholic  insurrection  against  a  Liberal 
Council  ;  and  yet  again  in  1844  it  led,  among  the 
Catholics  of  the  Valais  canton,  to  the  bloodiest  insur- 
rection of  all.  Since  these  disgraceful  outbreaks  the 
progress  of  Rationalism  in  Switzerland  has  been  steady. 
In  1847  a  chair  was  given  at  Berne  to  the  rationalistic 
scholar  Zeller,  without  any  such  resistance  as  w^as  made 
to  Strauss  at  Zurich.  In  1892,  out  of  a  total  number  of 
3,151  students  in  the  five  universities  of  Switzerland  and 
in  the  academies  of  Fribourg  and  Neuchatel,  the  number 
of  theological  students  was  only  374,  positively  less  than 
that  of  the  teaching  staff,  which  was  431.  Leaving  out 
the  academies  named,  which  had  no  medical  faculty, 
the  number  of  theological  students  stood  at  275  out  of 
2,917. 

The  church  in  Switzerland  has  thus  undergone  the 
relative  restriction  in  power  and  prestige  seen  in  the 
other  European  countries  of  long-established  culture. 
The  evolution,  however,  remains  negative  rather  than 
positive.  Though  a  number  of  pastors  latterly  call 
themselves   litres  penseiirs   or  penseurs   libres,    and    a 

'  Hag"eiibach,  Kirchcugcschichtc  des  i8.  uiid  iq.  Jahrhundcrts,  1848,  ii, 
422.  Rationalism  seems  to  have  spread  soonest  in  the  canton  of  Zurich. 
Id.  ii,  427. 

-  See  Grote's  Seven  Letters  co)iccniing  the  Politics  of  S-:vitserla)td, 
ed.  1876,  pp.  34-35.  Hagenbach  (Kircliengesc/iichtc,  ii,  427-S)  shows  no 
shame  over  the  insurrection  at  Zurich.  But  cp.  Beard,  in  the  compila- 
tion  Voices  of  the  Church  in  Reply  to  Dr.  Strauss,  1845,  PP-   17-18. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  347 

movement  of  ethical  culture  {morale  sociale)  is  making" 
progress,  the  forces  of  positive  freethought  are  not 
numerically  strong.  An  economic  basis  still  supports 
the  churches,  and  the  lack  of  it  leaves  rationalism  non- 
aggressive.' 

A  somewhat  similar  state  of  things  exists  in  Holland, 
where  the  "  higher  criticism"  of  both  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  made  notable  progress  in  the  middle  decades 
of  the  century.  There  then  resulted  not  only  an  exten- 
sive decay  of  orthodoxy  within  the  Protestant  Church, 
but  a  movement  of  aggressive  popular  freethought, 
which  was  for  a  number  of  years  well  represented  in 
journalism.  To-day,  orthodoxy  and  freethought  are 
alike  less  demonstrative  ;  the  broad  explanation  being 
that  the  Dutch  people  in  the  mass  has  ceased  to  be 
pietistic,  and  has  secularised  its  life.  Even  in  the  Bible- 
loving  Boer  Republic  of  South  Africa  (Transvaal),  one 
of  the  most  orthodox  of  the  civilised  communities  of  the 
world,  there  was  seen  a  generation  ago  the  phenomenon 
of  an  agnostic  ex-clergyman's  election  to  the  post  of 
president,  in  the  person  of  T.  F.  Burgers,  who  succeeded 
Pretorius  in  187 1.  His  election  was  of  course  on 
political  and  not  on  religious  grounds  ;  and  panic  fear 
on  the  score  of  his  heresy,  besides  driving  some  fanatics 
to  emigrate,  is  said  to  have  disorganised  a  Boer  expedi- 
tion under  his  command  ;-  but  his  views  were  known 
when  he  was  elected.  In  the  past  few  years  the  terrible 
experience  of  the  last  Boer  War,  in  South  Africa  as  in 
Britain,  has  perhaps  done  more  to  turn  critical  minds 
against  supernaturalism  than  has  been  accomplished  by 
almost  anv  other  agency  in  the  same  period.  In  Britain 
the  overturn  was  by  way  of  the  revolt  of  many  ethically- 
minded  Christians  against  the  attitude  of  the  orthodox 
churches,  which  were  so  generally  and  so  unscrupulously 


'  Cp.  the  rapport  of  Ch.  Fulpius  in  the  Almanack  de  Libre  Pense'e,  1906. 

-  G.  M.  Theal,  South  Africa  ("Story  of  the  Nations"  series),  pp.  340, 
345.  Mr.  Theal's  view  of  the  mental  processes  of  the  Boers  is  some- 
what h  priori,  and  his  explanation  seems  in  ptirt  inconsistent  with  his 
own  narrative. 


348  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


belligerent  as  to  astonish  many  even  of  their  enemies.' 
As  regards  the  Boers  and  the  Cape  Dutch  the  resultant 
unbelief  was  among  the  younger  men,  who  harassed 
their  elders  with  challenges  as  to  the  justice  or  the 
activity  of  a  God  who  permitted  the  liberties  of  his  most 
devoted  worshippers  to  be  wantonly  destroyed.  Among 
the  more  educated  burghers  in  the  Orange  Free  State 
commandos  unbelief  asserted  itself  with  increasing  force 
and  frequency.-  An  ethical  rationalism  thus  motived  is 
not  likely  to  be  displaced  save  by  a  successful  move- 
ment, religiously  inspired,  for  the  recovery  of  the  lost 
liberties  ;  and  the  Christian  churches  of  Britain  have 
thus  the  sobering  knowledge  that  the  war  which  they  so 
vociferously  glorified ^  has  wrought  to  the  discredit  of 
their  creed  alike  in  their  own  country  and  among  the 
vanquished. 

8.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  freethought  propaganda 
is  often  most  active  in  countries  where  the  Catholic 
Church  is  most  powerful.  Thus  in  Belgium  there  are 
at  least  three  separate  federations,  standing  for  hundreds 
of  freethinking  "groups";  in  Spain,  a  few  years  ago, 
there  w-ere  freethought  societies  in  all  the  large  towns, 
and  at  least  half-a-dozen  freethought  journals  ;  in 
Portugal  there  have  been  a  number  of  societies,  a 
weekly  journal,  O  Secnlo,  of  Lisbon  ;  and  a  monthly 
review,  O  Livre  Exaine.  In  France  and  Italy,  where 
educated  society  is  in  large  measure  rationalistic,  the 
Masonic  lodges  do  most  of  the  personal  and  social 
propaganda  ;  but  there  are  federations  of  freethought 
societies  in  both  countries.  In  Switzerland  freethought 
is  more  ag'e'ressive  in  the  Catholic  than  in  the  Protestant 


.&* 


'  An  Eng-lish  acquaintance  of  my  own  at  Cape  Town,  who  before  the 
war  not  only  was  an  orthodox  behever,  but  found  his  chief  weekly 
pleasure  in  attending-  church,  was  so  astounded  by  the  general  attitude 
of  the  clergy  on  the  war  that  he  severed  his  connection,  once  for  all. 
Thousands  did  the  same  in  England. 

-  I  write  on  the  streng:th  of  personal  testimonies  spontaneousl}-  g-iven 
to  me  in  South  Africa,  some  of  them  by  clergymen  of  the  Dutch 
Reformed  Church. 

3  See  the  evidence  collected  in  the  pamphlet  The  Churches  and  the 
War,  by  Alfred  Marks.     A"e7v  Age  Office,  1905. 


POPULAR  PROPAGANDA  349 

cantons.'  In  the  South  American  repubHcs  again,  as  in 
Italy  and  France,  the  Masonic  Lodges  are  predominantly 
freethinking  ;  and  in  Peru  there  was,  a  few  years  ago,  a 
Freethought  League,  with  a  weekly  organ.  That  the 
movement  is  also  active  in  the  other  republics  of  the 
Continent  may  be  inferred  from  the  facts  that  a  Posi- 
tivist  organisation  has  long  subsisted  in  Brazil  ;  that  its 
members  were  active  in  the  peaceful  revolution  which 
there  substituted  a  republic  for  a  monarchy  ;  and  that  at 
the  Freethought  Congresses  of  Rome  and  Paris  in  1904 
and  1905  there  was  an  energetic  demand  for  a  Congress 
at  Buenos  Ayres,  which  was  finally  agreed  to  for  1906. 

9.  The    history    of    popular   freethought    in    Sweden 
yields  a  good  illustration,  in  a  compact  form,-  of  the 
normal   play  of  forces  and    counter-forces.      Since  the 
day  of  Christina,  as  we  saw,  rationalism  has  been  little 
known     in    her    kingdom    down    till     modern    times. 
Bishop  Jesper  Svedberg  (d.  1735)  is  notable  as  being 
anti-trinitarian,     and    an    opponent    of     the    Lutheran 
doctrine    of   salvation  ;    and    his    son    followed    in    his 
footsteps  ;  but  Sweden  as  a  whole  was  little  touched  by 
the  great  ferment  of  the  eighteenth  century.     Only  in 
the    poets  J.   H.    Kjellgren    and   J.    M.    Bellman    (both 
d.    1795)  is    there    seen    the    influence  of    the    German 
Aufkldrung  and    the   spirit  of    Voltaire.      The    prose- 
writer  Tomas  Torild  (d.  1812),  who  wrote  among  other 
things  a  pamphlet  on  The  Freedom  of  the  General  Intel- 
ligence, shows  more  markedly  the  revolutionary  temper. 
Tegner,    the    poet-bishop,   author   of    the    once-famous 
Frithiofs  Saga,  was  further  notable  in   his  day  for  a 
determined    rejection    of    the    evangelical    doctrine    of 
salvation  ;  and  his  letters  contain  much  criticism  of  the 
ruling  system.     But  the  first  recognisable  champion  of 
freethought   in    Sweden    is    the    thinker   and    historian 
E.  G.  Geijer  (d.  1847),  whose  history  of  his  native  land 
is    one    of    the    best    European    performances    of    his 

'  Rapport  of  Ch.  Fulpius,  before  cited. 

-  For    the  survey  here    reduced  to  outline    I    am    indebted    to  two 
Swedish  friends. 


350  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

generation.  In  1820  he  was  prosecuted  for  his  attack 
upon  the  dogmas  of  the  Trinity  and  redemption — long 
the  special  themes  of  discussion  in  Sweden — in  his  book 
Thon'/d ;  but  was  acquitted  by  the  jury. 

Thenceforth  Sweden  follows  the  general  development 
of  Europe.  In  1841  Strauss's  Lehen  Jesit  was  translated 
in  Swedish,  and  wrought  its  usual  effect.  On  the 
popular  side  the  poet  Wilhelm  von  Braun  carried  on  an 
anti-Biblical  warfare  ;  and  a  blacksmith  in  a  provincial 
town  contrived  to  print  in  1850  a  translation  of  Paine's 
Age  of  Reason.  Once  more  the  spirit  of  persecution 
blazed  forth,  and  he  was  prosecuted  and  imprisoned. 
H.  B.  Palmaer  (d.  1854)  was  likewise  prosecuted  for  his 
satire,  Tlie  Last  Judgment  in  Cocaigne  (Krakwinkel), 
with  the  result  that  his  defence  extended  his  influence. 
In  the  same  period  the  Stockholm  curate  Nils  Ignell 
(d.  1864)  produced  a  whole  series  of  critical  pamphlets 
and  a  naturalistic  History  of  the  Development  of  Man^ 
besides  supplying  a  preface  to  the  Swedish  translation 
of  Renan's  Vie  de  Jesus.  Meantime  translations  of  the 
works  of  Thomas  Parker,  by  V.  Pfeiff  and  A.  F. 
Akerberg,  had  a  large  circulation  and  a  wide  influence  ; 
and  the  stringent  rationalism  of  the  gymnasium  rector 
N.  J.  Cramer  (d.  1893),  author  of  The  Fare-well  to  the 
Church.,  gave  an  edge  to  the  new  movement.  The 
partly  rationalistic  doctrine  of  Victor  Rydberg  (d.  1895) 
was  in  comparison  uncritical,  and  was  proportionally 
popular. 

On  another  line  the  books  of  Dr.  Nils  Lilja  (d.  1870), 
written  for  working  people,  created  a  current  of 
rationalism  among  the  masses  ;  and  in  the  next  genera- 
tion G.  J.  Leufstedt  maintained  it  by  popular  lectures 
and  by  the  issue  of  translations  of  Colenso,  Ingersoll, 
Buchner,  and  Renan.  Hjalmar  Stromer  (d.  1886)  did 
similar  platform  work.  Meantime  the  followers  of 
Parker  and  Rydberg  founded  in  1877  a  monthly  review. 
The  Truthseeker,  which  lasted  till  1894,  and  an  associa- 
tion of  "  Believers  in  Reason,"  closely  resembling  the 
British  Ethical   Societies  of  our  own  day.     Among  its 


SCHOLARLY  AND  OTHER  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM        351 

leading  adherents  has  been  K.  P.  Arnoldson,  the  well- 
known  peace  advocate.  Liberal  clerics  were  now  fairly 
numerous ;  Positivism,  represented  by  Dr.  Anton 
Nystrom's  General  History  of  Civilisation,  played  its 
part  ;  and  the  more  radical  freethinking  movement, 
nourished  by  new  translations,  became  specially  active, 
with  the  usual  effect  on  orthodox  feeling.  August 
Strindberg,  author  and  lecturer,  was  prosecuted  in  1884 
on  a  charge  of  ridiculing  the  eucharist,  but  was  declared 
not  guilty.  The  strenuous  Victor  Lennstrand,  lecturer 
and  journalist,  prosecuted  in  1888  and  later  for  his 
anti  -  Christian  propaganda,  was  twice  fined  and 
imprisoned,  with  the  inevitable  result  of  extending  his 
influence  and  discrediting  his  opponents.  "  Utilitarian 
Associations,"  created  by  his  activity,  were  set  up  in 
many  parts  of  the  country  ;  and  his  movement  survives 
his  death. 

§   II.   Scholarly  and  Other  Biblical  Criticism. 

I.  While  in  France,  under  the  restored  monarchy, 
rationalistic  activity  was  mainly  headed  into  historical, 
philosophical,  and  sociological  study,  and  in  England 
orthodoxy  predominated  in  theological  discussion,  the 
German  rationalistic  movement  went  on  among  the 
specialists,  despite  the  liberal  religious  reaction  of 
Schleiermacher,'  who  himself  gave  forth  such  an 
uncertain  sound.  His  case  and  that  of  his  father,  an 
army  chaplain,  tell  signally  of  the  power  of  the  mere 
clerical  occupation  to  develop  a  species  of  emotional 
belief  in  one  who  has  even  attained  rationalism.  When 
the  son,  trained  for  the  church,  avowed  to  his  father 
(1787)  that  he  had  lost  faith  in  the  supernatural  Jesus, 
the  father  professed  to  mourn  bitterly,  but  three  years 

'  As  to  the  absolute  predominance  of  rationalistic  unbelief  in  educated 
Germany  in  the  first  third  of  the  century,  see  the  Memoirs  of  F.  Perthes, 
Eng.  trans.  2nd  ed.  ii,  240-5,  255,  266-275.  Despite  the  various  reactions 
asserted  by  Perthes  and  others,  it  is  clear  that  the  tables  have  not  since 
been  turned.  Cp.  Pearson,  Infidelity,  pp.  554-9,  569-574-  Schleier- 
macher  is  charged  on  his  own  side  with  making  fatal  concessions. 
Robins,  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862,  i,  181  ;  and  Quinet  as  there   cited. 


352  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

later  avowed  that  he  in  his  own  youth  had  preached 
Christianity  for  twelve  years  while  similarly  disbelieving 
its  fundamental  tenet.'  He  professionally  counselled 
compromise,  which  the  son  duly  practised,  with  such 
success  that,  whereas  he  originally  addressed  his  Dis- 
courses on  Religion  (1799)  to  "  its  despisers  among  the 
educated,"  he  was  able  to  say  in  the  preface  to  the  third 
edition,  twenty  years  later  (1821),  that  the  need  now  was 
to  reason  with  the  pietists  and  literalists,  the  ignorant 
and  bigoted,  the  credulous  and  superstitious. ""  He  had 
himself  promoted  such  irrationalism  by  his  resistance 
to  the  critical  spirit.  When,  however,  soon  after  his 
funeral,  in  which  his  coffin  was  borne  and  followed  by 
troops  of  students,  his  church  was  closed  to  the  friends 
who  wished  there  to  commemorate  him,  it  was  fairly 
clear  that  his  own  popularity  lay  mainly  with  the  pro- 
gressive spirits,  and  not  among  the  orthodox  ;  and  in 
the  end  his  influence  tended  to  merge  in  that  of  the 
critical  movement.^ 

That  went  forward  with  a  new  precision  of  method. 
Beginning  with  the  Old  Testament,  criticism  gradually 
saw  more  and  more  of  mere  myth  where  of  old  men 
had  seen  miracle,  and  where  the  first  rationalists  saw 
natural  events  misconceived.  In  time  the  process 
reached  the  New  Testament,  every  successive  step  being 
resisted  in  the  old  fashion  ;  and  after  much  laborious 
work,  now  mostly  forgotten,  by  a  whole  company  of 
scholars,  among  whom  Paulus,  Eichhorn,  De  Wette, 
G.  L.  Bauer,  Wegscheider,  Bretschneider,  and  Gabler 
were  prominent,'^  the  train  as  it  were  exploded  on  the 
world   in  the  great  Life  of  Jesus   by  Strauss  (1835). 

^  Aus  Schlcierinachers  Leben  :  hi  Briefen,  i860,  i,  42,  84.  The  father's 
letters,  with  their  unctuous  rhetoric,  are  a  revelation  of  the  power  of 
declamatory  habit  to  eliminate  sincere  thought. 

^    Werkc,  1843,  i,  140. 

3  For  an  estimate  of  his  work  cp.  Baur,  Kirchengeschichte  des  igten 
Jahrli.  p.  45,  and  art.  bv  Rev.  F.  J.  Smith  in  Theological  Rcvicii',  July, 
1869. 

*  See  a  good  account  of  the  development  in  Strauss's  Iritroduction. 
He  notes  (§  11,  e?id)  that  the  most  extended  application  of  the  mythical 
principle  to  the  Gospels  before  his  time  was  in  an  anonymous  work  on 
Religion  and  Mythology  published  in  1799. 


SCHOLARLY  AND  OTHER  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM        353 

Before  this  time,  "  German  Rationalism  "  had  become 
the  terror  of  the  EngHsh  orthodox  ;  and  henceforth  a 
scholarly  "  infidelity  "  had  to  be  faced  throughout  the 
educated  world. 

Orthodoxy  was  at  first  fain  to  resort,  even  in  '*  intel- 
lectually free  "  Germany,  to  its  old  methods  of  repres- 
sion. The  authorities  of  Berlin  discussed  with  Neander 
the  propriety  of  suppressing  Strauss's  Leben  Jesii  ;^ 
and  after  a  time  those  who  shared  his  views  were 
excluded  even  from  philosophical  chairs. ""  Later,  the 
brochure  in  which  Edgar  Bauer  defended  his  brother 
Bruno  against  his  opponents  (1842)  was  seized  by  the 
police  ;  and  in  the  following  year,  for  publishing  The 
Strife  of  Criticism  with  Church  and  State,  the  same 
writer  was  sentenced  to  four  years'  imprisonment.  In 
private  life,  persecution  was  carried  on  in  the  usual 
ways.  Still,  the  research  and  the  discussion  w^ere 
irrepressible. 

Naturally  the  most  advanced  and  uncompromisingly 
scientific  positions  were  least  discussed,  the  stress  of 
dispute  going  on  around  the  criticism  which  modified 
without  annihilating  the  main  elements  in  the  current 
creed,  or  that  which  did  the  work  of  annihilation  on  a 
popular  level  of  thought.  Only  to-day  is  German 
"expert"  criticism  beginning  openly  to  reckon  with 
propositions  fairly  and  fully  made  out  by  German 
wTiters  of  three  or  more  generations  back.  Thus  in 
1 78 1  Corodi  in  his  Geschichte  des  Cliiliasmiis  dwelt 
on  the  pre-Hebraic  origins  of  the  belief  in  angels,  in 
immortality,  and  heaven  and  hell,  and  on  the  Persian 
derivation  of  the  Jewish  seven  archangels  ;  Wegscheider 
in  1819  in  his  Institutes  of  Theology  indicated  further 
connections  of  the  same  order,  and  cited  pagan  parallels 
to  the  virgin-birth  ;  J.  A.  L.  Richter  in  the  same  year 
pointed  to  Indian  and  Persian  precedents  for  the  Logos 

'  Dr.  J.  R.  Beard,  in  Voices  of  the   Chvrch  in  Reply  to  Strauss,  1845, 
pp.  16-17. 

^  Zeller,  D.  F.  Strauss,  Eng.  trans.  1879,  p.  56. 

VOL.   II  2A 


354  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

and  many  other  Christian  doctrines  ;  and  several  other 
writers,  Strauss  included,  pointed  to  both  Persian  and 
Babylonian  influences  on  Jewish  theology  and  myth.' 
When  even  these  theses  were  in  the  main  ignored,  more 
mordant  doctrine  was  necessarily  burked.  Such  sub- 
versive criticism  of  religious  history  as  Ghillany's  Die 
Menschenopfer  der  alien  Hebrlier  (1842),  insisting  that 
human  sacrifice  had  been  habitual  in  early  Jewry,  and 
that  ritual  cannibalism  underlay  the  paschal  eucharist, 
found  even  fewer  students  prepared  to  appreciate  it  than 
did  the  searching  ethico-philosophical  criticism  passed 
on  the  Christian  creed  bv  Feuerbach.  Daumer,  who  in 
1842  published  a  treatise  on  the  same  lines  as  Ghillany's 
{Der  Fetter  und  Molochdienst),  and  followed  it  up  in 
1847  with  another  on  the  Christian  mysteries,  nearly  as 
drastic,  wavered  later  in  his  rationalism  and  avowed  his 
conversion  to  a  species  of  faith.  Hence  a  certain  set- 
back for  his  school.  In  France,  the  genial  German 
revolutionist  and  exile  Ewerbeck  published,  under  the 
titles  of  Ou'  esl  ce  que  la  Religion  ?  and  QiC  est  ce  que 
la  Bible?  (1850),  two  volumes  of  very  freely  edited 
translations  from  Feuerbach,  Daumer,  Ghillany,  Liitzel- 
berger  (on  the  simple  humanity  of  Jesus),  and  Bruno 
Bauer,  avowing  that  after  vainly  seeking  a  publisher 
for  years  he  had  produced  the  books  at  his  own  expense. 
He  had,  however,  so  mutilated  the  originals  as  to  make 
the  work  ineffectual  for  scholars,  without  making  it 
attractive  to  the  general  public  ;  and  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  his  formidable-looking  arsenal  of  explosives 
had  much  effect  on  contemporary  French  thought,  which 
developed  on  other  lines. 

2.  On  other  lines  as  well  as  Strauss's,  however — 
notably  on  those  of  the  famous  Tubingen  school,  led 
by  F.  C.  Baur,  perhaps  the  ablest  Christian  scholar  of 
his  day,  and  certainly  the  most  intellectual  of  Christian 
historians  —  German  critical  research  proceeded  con- 
tinuously, with  a  notable  effect  on  the  supply  of  students 

'  See    Gunkel,   Zum    religionsgeschichtlichen    Verstnndnis   des   Neuen 
Testaments,  1903,  pp.  1-2,  note. 


SCHOLARLY  AND  OTHER  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM        355 


for  the  theolog-ical  profession.  The  numbers  of  Pro- 
testant and  Catholic  theological  students  in  all  Germany 
have  varied  as  follows  : — Protestant :  1831,  4,147  ;  1851, 
1,631;  i860,  2,520;  1876,  1,539;  1882-3,  3,168. 
Catholic:  1831,  1,801;  1840,  866;  1850,  1,393;  i860, 
1,209  ;  1880,  619.'  Thus,  under  the  reign  of  Bismarckian 
reaction  which  set  in  after  1848  there  was  a  prolonged 
recovery  ;  and  again  since  1876  the  figures  rise  for 
Protestantism  through  financial  stimulus.  When,  how- 
ever, we  take  population  into  account,  the  main  move- 
ment is  clear.  In  an  increasing  proportion,  the 
theological  students  come  from  the  rural  districts  (69.4 
in  1861-70),  the  towns  furnishing  ever  fewer  ;''  so  that 
the  conservative  measures  do  but  outwardly  and  formally 
affect  the  course  of  thought ;  the  clergy  themselves 
showing  less  and  less  inclination  to  make  clergymen  of 
their  sons.^  Even  among  the  Catholic  population, 
though  that  has  increased  from  ten  millions  in  1830  to 
sixteen  millions  in  1880,  the  number  of  theological 
students  has  fallen  from  eleven  to  four  per  100,000 
inhabitants. '^  Thus,  after  many  "  reactions  "  and  much 
Bismarckism,  the  Zeit-Geist  in  Germany  was  still  pro- 
nouncedly skeptical  in  all  classes  in  1881,5  when  the 
church  accommodation  in  Berlin  provided  only  two  per 
cent,  of  the  population,  and  even  that  provision  outwent 
the  demand.''  And  though  there  have  been  yet  other 
alleged  reactions  since,  and  the  imperial  influence  is 
zealously  used  for  orthodoxy,  the  mass  of  the  intelligent 
workers  remain  socialistic  and  freethinking ;  and  the 
mass  of  the  educated  classes  remain  unorthodox  in  the 
teeth  of  the  socialist  menace.  Reactionary  professors 
can  at  most  make  an  academic  fashion  :  the  great  body 
of  instructed  men  remains  tacitly  naturalistic.'' 

'  Conrad,  The  German  Universities  for  the  last  Fifty  Years,  Eng.  trans. 
1885,  p.  74.  See  p.  100  as  to  the  financial  measures  taken  ;  and  p.  105 
as  to  the  essentially  financial  nature  of  the  "  reaction." 

-  Id.  p.  103.  3  Id.  p.  104. 

*♦  Id.  p.  1 12.      See  pp.  I  iS-i  19  as  to  Austria  s  Id.  pp.  97-98. 

^  Professor  A.  D.  White,  Warfare,  i,  239. 

'  As  against  reactionary  views  of  Christian  origins,  the  German  laity 


356  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igfh  CENTURY 

3.   On  a  less  extensive  scale  than  in  Germany,  critical 
study    of    the    sacred    books    made   some    progress    in 
England,  France,  and  America  in  the  first   half  of  the 
century.     The  Unitarian  C.  C.  Hennell  produced  an 
Inquiry  Concerning  the  Origin  of  Christianity  (1838),  so 
important  for  its  time  as  to  be  thought  worth  translating 
into  German  by  Strauss  ;  and  this  found  a  considerable 
response  from  the  educated  English  public  of  its  day. 
In  the    preface    to    his    second    edition    (1841)    Hennell 
spoke  very  plainly  of  "  the  large  and  probably  increasing 
amount  of  unbelief  in  all  classes  around  us  ";  and  made 
the  then  remarkably  courageous  declarations  that  in  his 
experience  "  neither  deism,  pantheism,  nor  even  atheism 
indicate  modes  of  thought  incompatible  with  uprightness 
and  benevolence  "  ;  and  that  "  the  real  or  affected  horror 
which  it  is  still  a  prevailing  custom  to  exhibit  towards 
their  names  would  be  better  reserved  for  those  of  the 
selfish,  the  cruel,  the   bigot,   and    other   tormentors   of 
mankind."     In  the  next  generation,  Theodore  Parker 
in    the    United    States,  developing   his    critical    faculty 
chiefly  by  study  of  the  Germans,  at  the  cost  of  much 
obloquy,  forced  some  knowledge  of  critical  results  and 
a  measure  of  theistic  or  pantheistic  rationalism  on  the 
attention  of  the  orthodox  world  ;  promoting  at  the  same 
time  a  semi-philosophic,  semi-ethical    reaction    against 
the  Calvinistic  theology  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  thereto- 
fore  prevalent  among  the  orthodox  of   New   England. 
In  the  old  country  a  number  of  writers  developed  new 
movements    of  criticism  from   theistic    points   of  view. 
F.  W.  Newman,  the  scholarly  brother  of  John   Henry,' 
produced  a  book  entitled  The  Soul  (1849),  and  another, 
Phases  of  Faith  (1853),   which   had   much   influence    in 

has  recently  been  supplied  with  an  excellent  conspectus  of  the  Gospel 
problem  in  the  Vcrglcichendc  Uebersicht  der  vier  Evaiigelicii,  by  S.  G. 
Verus  (Leipzig  :  Van  Dyk,  1897),  ^  work  of  the  most  laborious  kind, 
issued  at  a  low  price. 

'  A  third  brother,  Charles  Robert,  became  an  atheist.  This,  as  well 
as  his  psychic  infirmity,  insures  him  sufficiently  severe  treatment  at  the 
hands  of  his  theistic  brother  in  the  introduction  to  the  latter's  Contribu- 
tions Chiefly  to  the  Early  History  of  the  late  Cardinal  Nezi'ina/i,  i8gi. 


SCHOLARLY  AND  OTHER  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM        357 

promoting  rationalism  of  a  rather  rigidly  theistic  cast. 
R.  W.  Mackay  in  the  same  period  published  two 
learned  treatises,  A  Sketch  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of 
Christianity  (1854),  notably  scientific  in  method  for  its 
time  ;  and  The  Progress  of  the  Intellect  as  Exemplified 
in  the  Religious  Development  of  the  Greeks  and  Hebreivs 
(1850),  which  won  the  admiration  of  Buckle  ;  "George 
Eliot "  translated  Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Christianity 
(1854)  under  her  own  name,  Marian  Evans  ;  and  W.  R. 
Greg,  one  of  the  leading  publicists  of  his  day,  put  forth 
a  rationalistic  study  of  The  Creed  of  Christendom:  Its 
Foundations  Contrasted  7vith  its  Superstructure  (1850), 
which  has  gone  through  many  editions  and  is  still 
reprinted.  Another  zealous  theist,  Thomas  Scott, 
whose  pamphlet-propaganda  on  deistic  lines  had  so 
wide  an  influence  during  many  years,  produced  an 
English  Life  of  Jesus  (1871),  which,  though  less  impor- 
tant than  the  works  of  Strauss  and  less  popular  than 
those  of  Renan,  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  disin- 
tegration of  the  traditional  faith  among  Engish  church- 
men. Still  the  primacy  in  critical  research  on  scholarly 
lines  lay  with  the  Germans,  till  the  results  of  their  work 
were  co-ordinated,  from  a  theistic  standpoint,'  in  the 
anonymous  work.  Supernatural  Religion  (1874-77),  a 
massive  and  decisive  performance,  too  powerful  to  be 
disposed  of  by  the  episcopal  and  other  attacks  made 
upon  it.-  Since  its  assimilation  the  orthodox  or  inspira- 
tionist  view  of  the  Gospels  has  lost  credit  among  com- 
petent scholars  even  within  the  churches.  The  battle- 
ground is  now  removed  to  the  problem  of  the  historicity 
of  the  ostensible  human  origins  of  the  cult ;  and 
scholarly  orthodoxy  takes  for  granted  many  of  the 
positions  which  fifty  years  ago  were  typical  of"  German 
rationalism." 


'  Now  abandoned  by  the  learned  author,  who  has  latterly  disclosed 
his  name — W.  R.  Cassels. 

-  See  the  testimonies  of  Pfleiderer,  The  Development  of  Theology  since 
Kant,  Eng.  trans.  1890,  p.  397,  and  Dr.  Samuel  Davidson,  Introd.  to  the 
Study  of  the  Neiv  Testament,  pref.  to  2nd  ed. 


358  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igtJi  CENTURY 

4.  In  France  systematic  criticism  of  the  sacred  books 
recommenced  in  the  second  half  of  the  century  with  such 
writings  as  those  of  P.  Larroque  {Examen  Critique 
des  doctrines  de  la  religion  chretienne,  i860)  ;  Gustave 
d'Eichthal  {Les  Evangiles,  Ptie.  I,  1863)  ;  and 
Alphonse  Peyrat  {Histoire  elernentaire  et  critique  de 
Jesus ^  1864)  ;  whereafter  the  rationalistic  view  was 
applied  with  singular  literary  charm,  if  with  imperfect 
consistency,  by  Renan  in  his  series  of  seven  volumes 
on  the  origins  of  Christianity,  and  with  more  scientific 
breadth  of  view  by  Ernest  Ha  vet  in  his  Christ  ianisme 
et  ses  Origines  (1872,  etc.).  Renan's  Vie  de  Jesus 
especially  has  been  read  throughout  the  civilised  world. 

5.  Old  Testament  criticism,  methodically  begun  by 
scholars  before  that  of  the  New  Testament,  has  in  the 
last  generation  been  carried  to  new  lengths,  after 
having  long  missed  some  of  the  first  lines  of  advance. 
Starting  from  the  clues  given  by  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  and 
Simon,  and  above  all  on  the  suggestion  of  Astruc  (whose 
work  on  the  subject  had  appeared  in  1753)  as  to  the 
twofold  element  implied  in  the  God-names  Jehovah  and 
Elohim,  it  had  proceeded,  for  sheer  lack  of  radical 
skepticism,  on  the  assumption  that  the  Pentateuchal 
history  was  true.  On  this  basis,  modern  Old  Testament 
criticism  of  a  professional  kind  maybe  said  to  have  been 
founded  by  Eichhorn,  who  hoped  by  a  quasi-rationalistic 
method  to  bring  back  unbelievers  to  belief.'  Of  his 
successors,  some,  like  Ilgen,  were  ahead  of  their  time  ; 
some,  like  De  Wette,  failed  to  make  progress  in  their 
criticism  ;  some,  like  Ewald,  remained  always  arbitrary; 
and  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  original,  as  Vatke, 
failed  to  coordinate  fully  their  critical  methods  and 
results.^  Thus  little  sure  progress  had  been  made, 
apart  from  discrimination  of  sources,  between  the  issue 

'  Cheyne,  Foundeys  of  Old  Testament  Criticism,  \?,<)T„p.  i6.  Eichhorn 
seems  to  have  known  Aslruc's  work  only  at  second-hand,  3'et,  without 
him,  it  mig-ht  be  contended,  Astruc's  work  would  have  been  completely- 
lost  to  science.     [Id.  p.  23.) 

*  See  Dr.  Cheyne's  surveys,  which  are  those  of  a  liberal  ecclesiastic — 
a  point  of  view  on  which  he  has  since  notably  advanced. 


SCHOLARLY  AND  OTHER  BIBLICAL  CRITICISM        359 

of  the  critical  Remarks  on  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  of  the 
Scotch  Catholic  priest,  Dr.  Geddes,  in  1800,  and  the 
publication  of  the  first  part  of  the  work  of  Bishop 
CoLENSO  on  The  Pentateuch  (1862).  This,  by  the 
admission  of  Kuenen,  who  had  begun  as  a  rather 
narrow  believer,'  corrected  the  initial  error  oi  the 
specialists  by  applying  to  the  narrative  the  common- 
sense  tests  suggested  long  before  by  Voltaire.-  Thence- 
forward the  "  higher  criticism  "  proceeded  with  such 
substantial  certainty  on  the  scientific  lines  of  Kuenen 
and  Wellhausen  that,  whereas  Professor  Robertson 
Smith  thirty  years  ago  had  to  leave  the  Free  Church  of 
Scotland  for  propagating  Kuenen's  views.  Canons  of 
the  English  Church  are  now  doing  the  work  with  the 
acquiescence  of  perhaps  nine  clergymen  out  of  ten;  and 
American  preachers  are  found  promoting  an  edition  of 
the  Bible  which  exhibits  the  critical  results  to  the 
general  reader.  Heresy  on  this  score  is  "  become 
merchandise."  Nevertheless,  the  professional  tendency 
to  compromise  (a  result  of  economic  and  other  pressures) 
keeps  most  of  the  ecclesiastical  critics  far  short  of  the 
outspoken  utterances  of  Kalisch,  who  in  his  Com- 
mentary on  Leviticus  (1867-72)  repudiates  every  vestige 
of  the  doctrine  of  inspiration. ^  Later  clerical  critics, 
notably  Canon  Driver,  use  language  on  that  subject 
which  cannot  be  read  with  critical  respect."* 

The  analytical  treatment  of  the  New  Testament  on  the 
same  principles  naturally  lagged  somewhat  ;  but  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  we  find  the  long 
series  of  textual  studies  by  German  and  other  specialists 
culminating   in    such    a   survey   as   that   of    the    Swiss 

'  Cheyne,  pp.  187-8. 

^  Kuenen,  Tlic  He.vafcucJi,  Eng'.  trans.,  introd.  pp.  xiv-xvii. 

3  These  utterances  were  noted  for  their  "  vig-our  and  independence  " 
by  Kuenen,  and  also  by  Dr.  Cheyne,  who  remarks  that  the  earlier  work 
of  Kalisch  on  Exodus  (1855)  was  somewhat  behind  the  critical  stand- 
point of  contemporary  investig-ators  on  the  Continent.  (Founders  of 
Old  Tesfatnent  Criticism,  p.  207.) 

*•  See  his  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Old  Testament,  pref.  "  It  is 
the  spirit  of  compromise  that  I  chiefly  dread  for  our  younger  students," 
wrote  Dr.  Cheyne  in  1893  (Founders,  p.  247).  His  courteous  criticism  of 
Dr.  Driver  does  not  fail  to  point  the  moral  in  that  writer's  direction. 


36o  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

theologian  Dr.  Schmiedel,  which  may  be  said  to  come 
within  sight  of  a  surrender  of  the  historicity  of  the 
Gospel  Jesus.  His  searching  analysis  has  found  a  place 
in  the  Encyclopcedia  Biblica,  edited  by  Dr.  Cheyne  and 
Mr.  A.  Sutherland  Black,  which  presents  many  other 
results  of  advanced  research  by  professional  theologians. 
Less  radical  but  still  disintegrating  views  of  the  Gospel 
texts  had  been  already  to  some  extent  popularised  for 
general  readers  in  England  by  such  works  as  that  of 
Mr.  J.  E.  Carpenter  on  The  First  Three  Gospels — a 
Unitarian  publication — and  The  Synoptic  Problem,  by 
Mr.  Jolley. 

6.  The  outcome  of  Old  Testament  criticism  is  worth 
noting  in  connection  with  the  results  of  Assyrian 
research.  Whereas  the  defenders  of  the  faith  even  a 
generation  ago  habitually  stood  to  the  "  argument  from 
prophecy,"  the  conception  of  prophecy  as  prediction  has 
now  become  meaningless  as  regards  the  so-called 
Mosaic  books  ;  and  the  constant  disclosure  of  interpo- 
lations and  adaptations  in  the  others  has  discredited 
it  as  regards  the  "  prophets  "  themselves.  At  the  same 
time,  a  comparison  of  Biblical  with  Assyrian  and  Baby- 
lonian texts  reduces  the  cosmology  and  anthropology  of 
Genesis  once  for  all  to  the  level  of  normal  mythology. 
The  old  argument  for  the  compatibility  of  the  Genesaic 
creation  story  with  geology  is  thus  welcome  now  only  to 
those  who  are  ignorant  of  the  results  of  Assyriology. 
That  the  clerical  exponents  of  the  higher  criticism  should 
in  the  face  of  their  own  results  continue  to  speak  of  the 
"  inspiration  "  of  their  texts  will  not  surprise  the  reader 
who  has  noted  the  analogous  phenomena  in  the  history 
of  the  religious  systems  of  antiquity. 

§  III.   The  Natural  Sciences. 

I.  The  power  of  intellectual  habit  and  tradition  had 
preserved  among  the  majority  of  educated  men,  to  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  notion  of  deity  either 
slightly  removed  from  that  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  or 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES  361 

ethically  modified  without  being  philosophically  trans- 
formed, though   the  astronomy  of  Copernicus,  Galileo, 
and  Newton  had  immensely  modified  the  Hebraic  con- 
ception of  the   physical  universe.     We  have  seen  that 
Newton  did  not  really  hold  by  the  Christian  scheme — he 
wrote,  at  times,  in  fact,  as  a  pantheist — but  some  later 
astronomers  seem  to  have  done   so.     When,  however, 
the  great  Laplace  developed  the  nebular  hypothesis, 
previously  guessed  at  by  Bruno  and  outlined  by  Kant, 
orthodox    psychological    habit    was    rudely    shaken    as 
regards  the  Biblical  account  of  creation  ;  and  like  every 
other   previous   advance    in    physical    science    this  was 
denounced  as   atheistic'— which,  as  we    know,   it  was, 
Laplace   having  declared   in  reply  to  Napoleon  that  he 
had  no  need  of  the  God  hypothesis.     Confirmed  by  all 
subsequent  science,  Laplace's  system   negates  once  for 
all    the  historic  theism  of  the  Christian   era  ;    and    the 
subsequent  concrete  developments  of  astronomy,  giving 
as  they  do  such  an  insistent  and  overwhelming  impres- 
sion   of    physical    infinity,   have   made   the    "Christian 
hypothesis"-    fantastic     save     for    minds     capable    of 
enduring  any  strain  on  the  sense  of  consistency.     Paine 
had  brought  the  difficulty  vividly  home  to  the  common 
intelligence  ;  and  though  the  history  of  orthodoxy  is  a 
history  of  the  success  of  institutions  and   majorities  in 
imposing  incongruous  conformities,   the    perception   of 
the    incongruity  on  this  side    must    have  been  a  force 
of    disintegration.     The    freethinking    of    the    French 
astronomers  of  the  Revolution  period  marks  a  decisive 
change  ;    and    as  early  as   1826  we  find   in  a  work  on 
Jewish  antiquities  by  a  Scotch  clergyman  a  very  plain 
indication^    of    disbelief    in    the    Hebrew   story    of  the 
stopping  of  the  sun  and  moon,  or  (alternatively)  of  the 

'  See  Professor  A.  D.  White's  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science  ivith 
Theology,  1896,  i,  17,  22. 

-  The  phrase  is  used  by  a  French  Protestant  pastor.  La  vdritd 
chrdtienne  et  la  doute  >?ioder>ie  {Conferences),  1879,  pp.  24-25. 

3  Antiquities  of  thejeivs,  by  William  Brown,  D.D.,  Edinburgh,  1826, 
i,  121-2.  Brown  quotes  "from  a  friend"  a  demonstration  of  the 
monstrous  consequences  of  a  stoppage  of  the  earth's  rotation. 


362  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igtli  CENTURY 

rotation  of  the  earth.  It  is  typical  of  the  tenacity  of 
religious  delusion  that  a  quarter  of  a  century  later  this 
among  other  irrational  credences  was  contended  for 
the  Swiss  theologian  Gaussen/  and  by  the  orthodox 
majority  elsewhere,  when  for  all  scientifically  trained 
men  they  had  become  untenable.  And  that  the  general 
growth  of  scientific  thought  was  disintegrating  among 
scientific  men  the  old  belief  in  miracles,  may  be 
gathered  from  an  article,  remarkable  in  its  day,  which 
appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  of  January,  1814 
(No.  46),  and  was  "  universally  attributed  to  Professor 
Leslie,"-  the  distinguished  physicist.  Reviewing  the 
argument  of  Laplace's  essay,  Siw  /es  probabilites^  it 
substantially  endorsed  the  thesis  of  Hume,  that  miracles 
cannot  be  proved  by  any  testimony. 

2.  In  the  same  period  of  reaction,  some  cultivators 
of  the  other  sciences  applied  their  results  to  the 
discredit  of  faith.  Professor  William  Lawrence  (1783- 
1867),  the  physiologist,  published  in  1816  an  Introduc- 
tion to  Comparative  Anatomy  and  Physiology^  containing 
some  remarks  on  the  nature  of  life,  which  elicited  from 
the  then  famous  Dr.  Abernethy  a  violent  attack  in  his 
Physiological  Lectures  delivered  before  the  College  of 
Surgeons.  Lawrence  was  charged  with  belonging  to 
the  party  of  French  physiological  skeptics,  whose  aim 
was  to  "loosen  those  restraints  on  which  the  welfare  of 
mankind  depends."^  In  the  introductory  lecture  of  his 
course  of  181 7  before  the  College  of  Physicians, 
Lawrence  severely  retaliated,  repudiating  the  general 
charge,  but  reasserting  that  the  dependence  of  life  on 
organisation  is  as  clear  as  the  derivation  of  daylight  from 

'  Thcopnenstia  :  The  Plenary  Inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  Engf. 
trans.  Edinburg-h,  1850,  pp.  246-9.  Gaussen  elaborately  argues  that  if 
eighteen  minutes  were  allowed  for  the  stoppage  of  the  earth's  rotation, 
no  shock  would  occur.  Finally,  however,  he  arg-ues  that  there  may 
have  been  a  mere  refraction  of  the  sun's  rays — an  old  theory,  already 
set  forth  by  Brown. 

"^  Dr.  C.  R.  Edmonds,  Introd.  to  rep.  of  Leland's  Vieiv  of  the  Deistical 
Writers,  Tegg-'s  ed.  1837,  P-  xxiii. 

3  Lawrence's  Lectures  on  Physiology,  Zoology,  and  the  Natural  History 
of  Alan,  8th  ed.  1840,  pp.  1-3. 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES  363 

the  sun.  The  war  was  adroitly  carried  at  once  into  the 
enemy's  territory  in  the  declaration  that  "The  profound, 
the  virtuous,  and  fervently  pious  Pascal  acknowledged, 
what  all  sound  theologians  maintain,  that  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul,  the  great  truths  of  religion,  and  the 
fundamental  principles  of  morals,  cannot  be  demon- 
strably proved  by  mere  reason  ;  and  that  revelation 
alone  is  capable  of  dissipating  the  uncertainties  which 
perplex  those  who  inquire  too  curiously  into  the  sources 
of  these  important  principles.  All  will  acknowledge 
that,  as  no  other  remedy  can  be  so  perfect  and  satis- 
factory as  this,  no  other  can  be  necessary,  if  we  resort  to 
this  with  firm  faith."'  The  value  of  this  pronouncement 
is  indicated  later  in  the  same  volume  by  subacid 
allusions  to  "  those  who  regard  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
as  writings  composed  with  the  assistance  of  divine 
inspiration,"  and  who  receive  Genesis  "as  a  narrative 
of  actual  events."  Indicating  various  "grounds  of 
doubt  respecting  inspiration,"  the  lecturer  adds  that  the 
stories  of  the  naming  of  the  animals  and  their  collection 
in  the  ark,  "  if  we  are  to  understand  them  as  applied  to 
the  living  inhabitants  of  the  whole  world,  are  zoologi- 
cally impossible."-  On  the  principle  then  governing 
such  matters,  Lawrence  was  in  1822,  on  the  score  of 
his  heresies,  refused  copyright  in  his  lectures,  which  were 
accordingly  reprinted  many  times  in  a  cheap  stereotyped 
edition,  and  thus  widely  diffused. ^ 

3.  A  more  direct  effect,  however,  was  probably  wrought 
by  the  science  of  geology,  which  in  a  stable  and  tested 
form  belongs  to  the  nineteenth  century.  Of  its  theoretic 
founders  in  the  eighteenth  century,  Werner  and  Dr. 
James  Hutton  (1726-1797),  the  latter  and  more  impor- 
tant'* is  known  from  his  Investigation  of  the  Principles  of 
Knoxvledge  (1794)  to  have  been  consciously  a  freethinker 
on  more  grounds  than  that  of  his  naturalistic  science  ; 
and  his  Theory  of  the  World  (1795)  was  duly  denounced 

'  Lawrence's  Lectures,  p.  9,  note.  -  Id.  pp.  168-9. 

3  Yet  Lawrence  was  created  a  baronet  two  months  before  his  death. 

''  Cp.  Whewell,  ^/^A  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  yd  ed.  iii,  505. 


364  FE BETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


as  atheistic'  Whereas  the  physical  infinity  of  the 
universe  almost  forced  the  orthodox  to  concede  a  vast 
cosmic  process  of  some  kind  as  preceding  the  shaping  of 
the  earth  and  solar  system,  the  formation  of  these  within 
six  days  was  one  of  the  plainest  assertions  in  the  sacred 
books  ;  and  every  system  of  geology  excluded  such  a 
conception.  As  the  evidence  accumulated,  in  the  hands 
of  men  mostly  content  to  deprecate  religious  opposition, - 
there  was  duly  evolved  the  quaint  compromise  of  the 
doctrine  that  the  Biblical  six  "days  "  meant  six  ages — a 
fantasy  still  cherished  in  the  pulpit.  Even  this  thesis, 
and  others  of  the  same  order,  drew  upon  their  supporters 
angry  charges  of  "infidelity."  Hugh  Miller,  whose 
natural  gifts  for  geological  research  were  chronically 
turned  to  confusion  by  his  orthodox  bias,  was  repeatedly 
so  assailed,  when  in  point  of  fact  he  was  perpetually 
tampering  with  the  facts  to  salve  the  Scriptures. ^  Of 
all  the  inductive  sciences,  geology  had  been  most 
retarded  by  the  Christian  canonisation  of  error.*  Even 
the  plain  fact  that  what  is  dry  land  had  once  been  sea 
was  obstinately  distorted  through  centuries,  though  Ovid^ 
had  put  the  observations  of  Pythagoras  in  the  way  of  all 
scholars  ;  and  though  Leonardo  da  Vinci  had  insisted 
on  the  visible  evidence  ;  nay,  deistic  habit  could  keep 
even  Voltaire  preposterously  incredulous  on  the  subject.'' 
When  the  scientific  truth  began  to  force  its  way  in  the 

'  White,  as  cited,  i,  222-3,  gives  a  selection  of  the  language  in  general 
use  among-  theologians  on  the  subject. 

^  The  early  policy  of  the  Geological  Society  of  London  (1807),  which 
professed  to  seek  for  facts  and  to  disclaim  theories  as  premature  (cp. 
Whewell,  iii,  428  ;  Buckle,  iii,  392),  was  at  least  as  much  sociallj'  as 
scientifically  prudential. 

3  See  the  excellent  monograph  of  \V.  M.  'Mdic\iem.\e,  Hugh  Miller  ; 
A  Critical  Study,  1905,  ch.  vi  ;  and  cp.  Spencer's  essay  on  Illogical 
Geology — Essays,  vol.  i.  Miller's  friend  Dick,  the  Thurso  naturalist, 
being  a  freethinker,  escaped  such  error.      (Mackenzie,  pp.  161-4.) 

■*  Cp.  the  details  given  by  Whewell,  iii,  406-8,  41 1-13,  506-7,  as  to  early 
theories  of  a  sound  order,  all  of  which  came  to  nothing.  Steno,  a  Dane 
resident  in  Italy  in  the  seventeenth  century,  had  reached  non-Scriptural 
and  just  views  on  several  points.  Cp.  White,  Hist,  of  the  Warfare  of 
Science  with  Theology,  i,  215. 

5  Metamorphoses,  lib.  xv. 

'  See  his  essay,  Des  Singularities  de  la  Nature,  ch.  xii  ;  and  his  Disser- 
tation sur  les  changements  arrivds  dans  not  re  globe. 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES  365 

teeth  of  such  authorities  as  Cuvier,  who  stood  for  tlie 
"  Mosaic"doctrine,  the  effect  was  proportionately  marked  ; 
and  whether  or  not  the  suicide  of  Miller  (1856)  was  in 
any  way  due  to  despair  on  perception  of  the  collapse 
of  his  reconciliation  of  geology  with  Genesis,'  the 
scientific  demonstration  made  an  end  of  revelationism 
for  many. 

4.   Still   more   rousing,   finally,   was  the   effect  of  the 
science  of  zoology,  as   placed   upon   a   broad    scientific 
foundation  by  Charles  Darwin.    Here  again  steps  had 
been  taken   in   previous  generations  on  the  right  path, 
without  any  general  movement  on  the  part  of  scientific 
and  educated  men.    Darwin's  own  grandfather,  Erasmus 
Darwin,  had  in  his  Zoonomia  (1794)  anticipated  many 
of  the  positions  of  the  French  La:\iarck,  who  in   1801 
began  developing  the  views  he  fully  elaborated  in  1815, 
as  to  the  descendance  of  all  existing  species  from  earlier 
forms.-     As  early  as    1795   Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire 
had  begun  to  suspect  that  all   species  are  variants  on  a 
primordial  form  of  life  ;  and  at  the  same  time  (1794-5) 
Goethe  in  Germany  had  reached   similar  convictions. ^ 
That   views    thus    reached    almost    simultaneously    in 
Germany,   England,   and    France,   at   the   time    of  the 
French  Revolution,  should  have  to  wait  for  two  genera- 
tions before  even  meeting  the  full  stress  of  battle,  must 
be  put  down  as  one  of  the  results  of  the  general  reaction. 
Saint-Hilaire,  publishing  his  views  in  1828,  was  officially 
overborne  by  the  Cuvier  school  in  France.     In  England, 
indeed,  so  late  as    1855,    we  find   Sir  David    Brewster 
denouncing  the    Nebular    Hypothesis:  "that  dull   and 

dangerous  heresy   of  the  age An   omnipotent  arm 

was    required    to   give    the    planets  their   position    and 
motion  in  space,  and  a  presiding  intelligence  to  assign 

'  He  had  just  completed  a  work  on  the  subject  at  his  death.  Cp. 
Mackenzie,  Hugh  Miller,  as  cited,  pp.  134-5,  I4^~7' 

-  See  Charles  Darwin's  Historical  Sketch  prefixed  to  the  Origin  of 
Species. 

3  Meding-,  as  cited  by  Darwin,  6th  ed.  i,  p.  xv.  Goethe  seems  to 
have  had  his  g-eneral  impulse  from  Kielmeyer,  who  also  taught  Cuvier. 
Virchow,  Gothe  als  Naturforscher,  1861,  Beilage  x. 


366  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


to  them  the  different  functions  they  had  to  perform."' 
And  Murchison  the  geologist  was  no  less  emphatic 
against  Darwinism,  which  he  rejected  till  his  dying  day 
(1871). 

5.  Other  anticipations  of  Darwin's  doctrine  in  England 
and  elsewhere  came  practically  to  nothing,'  as  regarded 
the  general  opinion,  until  Robert  Chambers  in  1844 
published  anonymously  his  Vestiges  of  the  Natural 
History  of  Creation^  a  work  which  found  a  wide 
audience,  incurring  bitter  hostility  not  only  from  the 
clergy  but  from  some  specialists  who,  like  Huxley,  were 
later  to  take  the  evolutionist  view  on  Darwin's  persua- 
sion. Chambers  it  was  that  brought  the  issue  within 
general  knowledge  ;  and  he  improved  his  position  in 
successive  editions.  A  hostile  clerical  reader,  Whewell, 
admitted  of  him,  in  a  letter  to  a  less  hostile  member 
of  his  profession,  that,  "as  to  the  degree  of  resemblance 
between  the  author  and  the  French  physiological 
atheists,  he  uses  reverent  phrases  :  theirs  would  not 
be  tolerated  in  England";  adding:  "You  would  be 
surprised  to  hear  the  contempt  and  abhorrence  with 
which  Owen  and  Sedgwick  speak  of  the  Vestiges. "'^^ 
Hugh  Miller,  himself  accused  of  "infidelity"  for  his 
measure  of  inductive  candour,  held  a  similar  tone 
towards  men  of  greater  intellectual  rectitude,  calling 
the  liberalising  religionists  of  his  day  "  vermin  "  and 
"reptiles,"-*  and  classifying  as  "degraded  and  lost"^ 
all  who  should  accept  the  new  doctrine  of  evolution, 
which,  as  put  by  Chambers,  was  then  coming  forward 
to  evict  his  own  delusions  from  the  field  of  science. 

6.  "Contempt  and  abhorrence"  had  in  fact  at  all 
times  constituted  the  common  Christian  temper  towards 
every  form  of  critical  dissent  from  the  body  of  received 
opinion  ;  and  only  since  the  contempt  and  abhorrence 


'   Memoirs  of  Newton,  i,  131.  -  See  Darwin's  Sketch,  as  cited. 

3  Letter  of  March  i6th,  1845,  in  Life  of  WheweU,  by  Mrs.  Stair  Doug^las, 
2nd  ed.  1882,  pp.  318-319. 

4  Mackenzie,  Hugh  Miller,  p.  185, 
=  Foot-Prints  of  the  Creator,  end. 


THE  NATURAL  SCIENCES  36 

have  been  in  a  large  degree  retorted  on  the  bigots  by 
instructed  men  has  a  better  spirit  prevailed.  Such  a 
reaction  was  greatly  promoted  by  the  establishment  of 
the  Darwinian  theory.  It  was  after  the  above-noted 
preparation,  popular  and  academic,  and  after  the  theory 
of  transmutation  of  species  had  been  definitely  pro- 
nounced erroneous  by  the  omniscient  Whewell/  that 
Darwin  produced  (1859)  his  irresistible  arsenal  of 
arguments  and  facts,  the  Origin  of  Species,  expounding 
systematically  the  principle  of  Natural  Selection,  sug- 
gested to  him  by  the  economic  philosophy  of  Malthus, 
and  independently  and  contemporaneously  arrived  at  by 
Dr.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace.  The  outcry  was  enormous; 
and  the  church,  as  always,  arrayed  itself  violently  against 
the  new  truth.  Bishop  Wilberforce  affirmed  in  the 
Quarterly  Review  that  "  the  principle  of  natural  selection 
is  absolutely  incompatible  with  the  word  of  God, "^  which 
was  perfectly  true  ;  and  at  a  famous  meeting  of  the 
British  Association  in  i860  he  so  travestied  the  doctrine 
as  to  goad  Huxley  into  a  fierce  declaration  that  he 
would  rather  be  a  descendant  of  an  ape  than  of  a  man 
who  (like  the  Bishop)  plunged  into  questions  with 
which  he  had  no  real  acquaintance,  only  to  obscure  them 
and  distract  his  hearers  by  appeals  to  religious  prejudice.^ 
The  mass  of  the  clergy  kept  up  the  warfare  of  ignorance  ; 
but  the  battle  was  practically  won  within  twenty  years.  In 
France,  Germany,  and  the  United  States  leading  theolo- 
gians had  made  the  same  suicidal  declarations,  entitling 
all  men  to  say  that,  if  evolution  proved  to  be  true,  Chris- 
tianity was  false.  Professor  Luthardt,  of  Leipzig,  took 
up  the  same  position  as  Bishop  Wilberforce,  declaring 
that  '^  the  whole  superstructure  of  personal  religion  is 
built  upon  the  doctrine  of  creation  ";•*  leading  American 

'  Hist,  of  the  Indue  ive  Sciences,  3rd.  ed.  iii,  479-483  ;  Life,  as  above 
cited.  Whewell  is  said  to  have  refused  to  allow  a  copy  of  the  Origin  of 
Species  to  be  placed  in  the  Trinity  College  Library.     White,  i,  84. 

^  White,  i,  70  sq. 

3  Clodd's  Thomas  Henry  Hitxlev,  1902,  pp.  19-20. 

■*  Luthardt,   Fundamental  Truths   of  Christianity,   Eng-.    trans.    1865, 
p.  74. 


368  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  19th  CENTURY 


theologians  pronounced  the  new  doctrine  atheistic  ;  and 
everywhere  gross  vituperation  eked  out  the  theological 
argument. 

See  the  many  examples  cited  by  White.  As  late  as  1885 
the  Scottish  clergyman  Dr.  Lee  is  quoted  as  calling  the 
Darwinians  "  gospellers  of  the  gutter,"  and  charging  on  their 
doctrine  "utter  blasphemy  against  the  divine  and  human 
character  of  our  incarnate  Lord  "  (White,  i,  83).  Carlyle  is 
quoted  as  calling  Darwin  "an  apostle  of  dirt-worship."  His 
admirers  appear  to  regard  him  as  having  made  amends  by 
admitting  that  Darwin  was  personallv  charming. 

7.  Thus  the  idea  of  a  specific  creation  of  all  forms  of  life 
by  an  originating  Deity — the  conception  Avhich  virtually 
united  the  deists  and  Christians  of  the  eighteenth 
century  against  the  atheists — was  at  length  scientifically 
exploded.  The  principle  of  personal  divine  rule  or 
providential  intervention  had  now  been  philosophically 
excluded  successively  (i)  from  astronomy  by  the  system 
of  Newton  ;  (2)  from  the  science  of  earth-formation  by 
the  system  of  Laplace  and  the  new  geology  ;  (3)  from 
the  science  of  living  organisms  by  the  new  zoology.  It 
only  needed  that  the  deistic  conception  should  be  further 
excluded  from  the  human  sciences — from  anthropology, 
from  the  philosophy  of  history,  and  from  ethics — to  com- 
plete, at  least  in  outline,  the  rationalisation  of  modern 
thought.  Not  that  the  process  was  complete  in  detail 
even  as  regarded  zoology.  Despite  the  plain  implica- 
tions of  the  Origin  of  Species,  the  doctrine  of  the  Descent 
of  Man  (1871)  came  on  many  as  a  shocking  surprise, 
and  evoked  a  new  fury  of  protest.  The  lacuna  in 
Darwin,  further,  had  to  be  supplemented  ;  and  much 
speculative  power  has  been  spent  on  the  task  by 
Haeckel,  without  thus  far  establishing  complete  agree- 
ment. But  the  desperate  stand  so  long  made  on  the 
score  of  the  "missing  link"  was  finally  discredited  in 
1894 ;  and  the  Judago-Christian  doctrine  of  special 
creation  and  providential  design  appears,  even  in  the 
imperfectly  educated  and  largely  ill-placed  society  of  our 
day,  to  be  already  a  lost  cause. 


ABSTRACT  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS  369 

§   IV.   Abstract  Philosophy  and  Ethics. 

I.  The  philosophy  of  Kant,  while  giving  the  theo- 
logical class  a  new  apparatus  of  defence  as  against 
common-sense  freethinking,  forced  none  the  less  on 
theistic  philosophy  a  great  advance  from  the  orthodox 
positions.  Thus  his  immediate  successors,  Fichte  and 
Schelling,  produced  systems  of  which  one  was  loudly 
denounced  as  atheistic,  and  the  other  as  pantheistic,' 
despite  its  dualism.  Neither  seems  to  have  had  much 
influence  on  concrete  religious  opinion  outside  the 
universities  f  and  when  Schelling  in  old  age  turned 
Catholic  obscurantist,  the  gain  to  clericalism  was  not 
great.  Hegel  in  turn  loosely  wrought  out  a  system  of 
which  the  great  merit  is  to  substitute  the  conception  of 
existence  as  relation  for  the  nihilistic  idealism  of  Fichte 
and  the  unsolved  dualism  of  Schelling.  This  system 
he  latterly  adapted  to  practical  exigencies^  by  formu- 
lating a  philosophic  Trinity  and  hardily  defining  Chris- 
tianity as  *'  Absolute  Religion  "  in  comparison  with  the 
various  forms  of"  Natural  Religion."  Nevertheless,  he 
counted  in  a  great  degree  as  a  disintegrating  influence, 
and  was  in  a  very  practical  way  anti-Christian. 

Compare  Hagenbach,  German  Rationalism  (Eng-.  trans,  of 
Kirchengeschichte),  pp.  364-9  ;  Renan,  Etudes  d'histoii-e  reli- 
g-ieiise,  5e  t^dit.  p.  406  ;  J.  D.  Morell,  Histor.  and  Crit.  Vie^v  of 
the  Spec.  Philos.  of  Europe  in  the  A^incteenth  Century,  2nd  ed. 
1847,  ii,  189-191  ;  Robins,  A  Defence  of  the  Faith,  1862,  Pt.  i, 
pp.  1 35-1 41,  176;  Eschenmenger,  Die  Hegel^sche  Religions- 
philosophie,  1834  ;  quoted  in  Beard's  l^oices  of  the  Church,  p.  8  j 
Leo,  Die  Hegelingen,  1838  ;  and  Reinhard,  Lehrbuch  der  Ge- 
schichte  der  Philosophic,  2nd  ed.  1839,  pp.  753-4 — also  cited  by 
Beard,  pp.  9-12. 

Not  only  does   his    conception    of    the   Absolute   make 
deity  simply  the  eternal  process  of  the  universe,  and  the 

'  Such  is  Saintes's  view  of  Schellingf.  Hist.  crit.  du  rationalisme  en 
Alleviagne,  p.  323. 

^  Id.  pp.  322-4. 

3  As  to  Heg-el's  mental  development,  cp.  J.  R.  Beard,  D.  D. ,  on 
"Strauss,  Heg'el,  and  their  Opinions,"  in  Voices  of  tJie  C/iurcIi  in  Reply 
to  Strauss,  1845,  pp.  3-4. 

VOL.   II  2B 


370  FREETIIOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


divine  consciousness  indistinguishable  from  the  total 
consciousness  of  mankind/  but  his  abstractions  lend 
themselves  equally  to  all  creeds  \'  and  some  of  the  most 
revolutionary  of  the  succeeding  movements  of  German 
thought — as  those  of  Strauss, ^  Feuerbach,  and  Marx — 
professedly  founded  on  him.  In  1854,  Heine  told  his 
French  readers  that  there  were  in  Germany  "  fanatical 
monks  of  atheism  "  who  would  willingly  burn  \^oltaire 
as  a  besotted  deist  -^  and  Heine  himself,  in  his  last  years 
of  suffering  and  of  revived  religiosity,  could  see  in 
Hegel's  system  only  atheism.  Bruno  Bauer  at  first 
opposed  Strauss,  and  afterwards  went  even  further  than 
he,  professing  Hegelianism  all  the  while. ^  Schopen- 
hauer and  Hartmann  in  turn  being  even  less  sustain- 
ing to  orthodoxy,  and  later  orthodox  systems  failing  to 
impress,  there  came  in  due  course  the  cry  of  "  Back  to 
Kant,"  where  at  least  orthodoxy  had  some  formal 
semblance  of  sanction.  Hegel  himself  was  indeed,  in 
his  last  days,  avowedly  bent  on  championing  the 
Christian  creed  at  all  its  main  points  ;  but  here  his 
method,  arbitrary  even  for  him,  appealed  neither  to  the 
orthodox  nor,  with  a  few  exceptions,^  to  his  own 
disciples,  some  of  whom,  as  Ruge,  at  length  definitely 
renounced  Christianity.^  Hartmann's  work  on  The  Self- 
Reparation  of  Christianity^  is  a  stringent  exposure  of 
the  unreality  of  what  passed  for  "liberal  Christianity" 
in  Germany  a  generation  ago,  and  an  appeal  for  a  "  new 
concrete  religion  "  of  monism  or  pantheism  as  a  bulwark 
against  Ultramontanism.     On    this    monism,   however, 

'  Cp.  Morell,  as  cited,  and  pp.  195-6  ;  and  Feuerbach,  as  summarised 
by  Baur,  Kirchengcs.  des  igten  Jahrh.^  p.  390. 

-  Cp.  Michelet  as  cited  by  Morell,  ii,  192-3. 

3  As  to  Strauss,  cp.  Beard,  as  above  cited,  pp.  21-2,  30;  and  Zeller, 
David  Friedrich  Strauss,  Kng.  trans.  1899,  pp.  35,  47-8,  71-2,  etc. 

•'   Gesfdndnisse.     Werke,  iv,  33.      Cp.  iii,  no. 

5  Cp.  Hag-enbach,  pp.  369-372  ;  Farrar,  Crit.  Hist,  of  Freethought, 
pp.  387-8.  On  Bauer's  critical  development  and  academic  career  see 
Baur,  Kirchengesch.  des  igfeii  JahrJi.,  pp.  386-9. 

•^  E.g.,  Dr.  Hutchison  Stirling-.  See  his  trans,  of  Schwegfler's  Hand- 
book of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  6th  ed.  p.  438  sq. 

^  Baur,  last  cit.  p.  389. 

^  Das  Selbstersetzung  des  Christenthtivis,  2te  Aufl.  1874.- 


ABSTRACT  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS  ^yi 

Hartmann  insists  on  grounding  his  pessimism.  On  the 
whole,  the  effect  of  all  German  philosophy  has  probably 
been  to  make  for  the  general  discredit  of  theistic  philo- 
sophy, the  surviving  forms  of  Hegelianism  being  little 
propitious  to  current  religion.  And  though  Schopen- 
hauer and  Nietzsche  can  hardly  be  said  to  carry  on  the 
task  of  philosophy  either  in  spirit  or  in  effect,  yet  the 
rapid  intensilication  of  hostility  to  current  religion  which 
their  writings  in  particular  manifest'  must  be  admitted 
to  stand  for  a  deep  revolt  against  the  Kantian  com- 
promise. 

2.  From  the  collisions  of  philosophic  systems  in 
Germany  there  emerged  two  great  practical  freethinking 
forces,  the  teachings  of  Ludwig  Feuerbach  (1804-76), 
who  was  deprived  of  his  chair  at  Erlangen  in  1830  for 
his  Thoughts  upon  Death  and  Immortality^  and  Ludwig 
BucHNER,  who  was  deprived  of  his  chair  of  clinic  at 
Tubingen  in  1855  for  his  Force  and  Matter.  The 
former,  originally  a  Hegelian,  expressly  broke  away 
from  his  master,  declaring  that  whereas  Hegel  belonged 
to  the  "Old  Testament"  of  modern  philosophy,  he 
himself  would  set  forth  the  New,  wherein  Hegel's  funda- 
mentally incoherent  treatment  of  deity  (as  the  total 
process  of  things  on  the  one  hand,  and  an  objective 
personality  on  the  other)  should  be  cured. ^  Feuerbach 
accordingly,  in  his  Essence  of  Christianity  (1841)  and 
Essence  of  Religion  (1851),  supplied  one  of  the  first 
adequate  modern  statements  of  the  positively  rationalistic 
position  as  against  Christianity  and  theism,  in  terms  of 
philosophic  as  well  as  historical  insight,  a  statement 
to  which  there  is  no  characteristically  modern  answer 
save  in  terms  of  the  refined  sentimentalism  of  Renan,^ 

'  See  Schopenhauer's  dialogfues  o\\  Religion  and  Immortality,  and  his 
essay  on  The  Christian  System  (Eng-.  trans,  in  Schopenhauer  Series  by 
T.  B.  Saunders),  and  Nietzsche's  Antichrist.  The  latter  work  is  dis- 
cussed by  the  writer  in  Essays  in  Sociolog-y,  vol.  ii. 

-  Baur  gives  a  good  summar}',  Kirchengeschiclttc,  pp.  390-4.  V^atke 
similarly  g-rew  out  of  his  orig^inal  Heg'elianism.      Cheyne,  Founders,  pp. 

135-140.  .      ^      , 

3  See  his  paper,  M.  Feuerbach  et  la  noiivelle  t'cole  hdgdhenne,  in  Etudes 
d'histoire  religi^ise.     Baur,  who  pronounced   Feuerbach  a   nobler  and 


372  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

fundamentally  averse  alike  to  scientific  precision  and 
intellectual  consistency. 

On  Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Religion  followed  the 
resounding  explosion  of  Biichner's  Force  and  Matter 
(1855),  which  in  large  measure,  but  with  much  greater 
mastery  of  scientific  detail,  does  for  the  plain  man  of  his 
century  what  d'Holbach  in  his  chief  work  sought  to  do 
for  his  day.  Constantly  vilified,  even  in  the  name  of 
philosophy,  in  the  exact  tone  and  spirit  of  animal 
irritation  which  marks  the  religious  vituperation  of  all 
forms  of  rationalism  in  previous  ages  ;  and  constantly 
misrepresented  as  professing  to  explain  an  infinite 
universe  when  it  does  but  show  the  hollowness  of  all 
supernaturalist  explanations,'  the  book  steadily  holds 
its  ground  as  a  manual  of  anti-mysticism.-  Between 
them,  Feuerbach  and  Biichner  may  be  said  to  have 
framed  for  their  age  an  atheistic  "  System  of  Nature," 
concrete  and  abstract,  without  falling  into  the  old  error 
of  substituting  one  apriorism  for  another. 

3.  In  France,  the  course  of  thought  had  been  hardly 
less  revolutionary.  Philosophy,  like  everything  else,  had 
been  affected  by  the  legitimist  restoration  ;  and  between 
Victor  Cousin  and  the  other  "classic  philosophers" 
of  the  first  third  of  the  century,  orthodoxy  was  nomi- 
nally reinstated.  Yet  even  among  these  there  was  no 
firm  coherence.  Maine  de  Biran,  one  of  the  shrinking 
spirits  who  passed  gradually  into  an  intolerant  authori- 
tarianism from  fear  of  the  perpetual  pressures  of  reason, 
latterly  declared  (182 1)  that  a  philosophy  which  ascribed 
to  deity  only  infinite  thought  or  supreme   intelligence, 

more  important  personality  than  Bruno  Bauer,  makes  an  oddly  weak 
answer  to  his  philosophy  (fairly  stated  by  Baur),  saying'  merely  that  it 
is  extremely  one-sided,  that  it  favours  the  communistic  and  other  extreme 
tendencies  of  the  time,  and  that  it  brings  everything"  "  under  the  rude 
rule  of  egfoism  "  (KircJicngeschichfe,  p.  396). 

'  Biichner  expressly  rejected  the  term  "  materialism  "  because  of  its 
misleading"  implications  or  connotations.  Cp. ,  in  Mrs.  Bradlaug"h 
Bonner's  Charles  Bradlaugh,  the  discussion  in  Part  II,  ch.  i,  §  3  (by 
J.  M.  R.). 

=  While  the  similar  works  of  Carl  Vogt  and  Moleschott  have  gone 
out  of  print,  Biichner's,  recast  ag'ain  and  ag'ain,  continues  to  be  repub- 
lished. 


ABSTRACT  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS  373 

eliminating  volition   and   love,  was  pure  atheism  ;  and 
this  pronouncement  struck  at  the  philosophy  of  Cousin. 
Nor  was  this  species  of  orthodoxy  any  more  successful 
than  the  furious  irrationalism  of  Joseph  De  Maistre  in 
setting  up  a  philosophic  form  of  faith,  as  distinct  from 
the  cult  of  rhetoric  and  sentiment  founded  by  Chateau- 
briand.    Cousin    was    deeply    distrusted    by  those  who 
knew  him,  and  at  the  height  of  his  popularity  he  was 
contemned  by  the  more  competent  minds  around  him, 
such  as  Sainte-Beuve  and   Edgar  Ouinet.'     The  latter 
thinker  himself  counted  for  a  measure  of  rationalism, 
though   he  argued  for  theism,  and  undertook  to  make 
good     the     historicity    of    Jesus     against    those    who 
challenged    it.     For  the    rest,   even    among    the    osten- 
sibly conservative  and   official   philosophers,  Theodore 
Jouffroy,    an    eclectic,    who    held    the    chair   of    moral 
philosophy  in   the  Faculte  des  Lettres  at  Paris,  was  at 
heart  an  unbeliever  from  his  youth  up,-  and  even  in  his 
guarded  writings  was  far  from  satisfying  the  orthodox. 
"God,"  he  wrote, 3  "  interposes  as   little   in  the  regular 
development  of  humanity  as  in  the  course  of  the  solar 
system."     He    added    a    fatalistic    theorem    of    divine 
predetermination,  which  he  verbally  salved  in  the  usual 
way    by    saying    that     predetermination     presupposed 
individual    liberty.     Eclecticism     thus    fell,    as    usual, 
between    two   stools  ;    but    it   was    not    orthodoxy    that 
would  gain.     On  another  line  Jouffroy  openly  bantered 
the  authoritarians  on  their  appeal  to  a  popular  judgment 
which  they  declared  to  be  incapable  of  pronouncing  on 
religious  questions.** 

On  retrospect,  the  whole  official  French  philosophy  of 
the  period,  however  conservative  in  profession,  is  found 

•  Cp.  Paul  Deschanel,  Figures  LitL'ratres,  1889,  pp.  130-2,  171-3  ; 
and  Ch.  Adam,  La  Philosophie  en  France,  1894,  p.  228. 

=  Adam,  as  cited,  pp.  227-230. 

3  In  his  Melanges  Philosophiques  (1833),  Eng.  trans,  (incomplete)  by 
Geor.e^e  Riplev,  Philos.  Essays  of  Th.  Jouffroy,  Edinburgh,  1839,  ii, 
32.  Ripley,  who  was  one  of  the  American  transcendentalist  group,  and 
a  member  of  the  Brook  Farm  Colony,  indicates  his  own  semi-rationalism 
in  his  Introductory  Note,  p.  xxv. 

■•  MtHanges philosophiques,  trans,  as  cited,  ii,  95. 


374  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


to  have  been   at  bottom  rationalistic,   and  only  super- 
ficially friendly  to  faith.     Lamennais  declaimed  warmly 
against  r Indifference  en  matiere  de  religion  (1818-24)  ; 
and    Damiron,   writing    his   Essai  siir  I'histoire   de   la 
p/iilosophie  en  France  au  XIXe  Siecle  in   1834,  replies 
in  a  fashion  more  amiable  than  reassuring,  commenting 
on    the   "strange  skepticism"   of  Lamennais  as  to  the 
human   reason.'     For  himself,  he  takes  up  the  parable 
of  Lessing,    and    declares    that   where    Lessing    spoke 
doubtfully,  men  had  now  reached  conviction.     It  w^as  no 
longer  a  question  of  whether,  but  of  when,  religion  was 
to    be  recast  in  terms  of  fuller  intelligence.     "In    this 
religious  regeneration  we  shall  be  to  the  Christians  what 
the   Christians  were  to  the  Jews,  and  the  Jews  to  the 
patriarchs  :    we    shall    be    Christians    and     something 
more."     The   theologian    of    the    future   will    be    half- 
physicist,     half-philosopher.     "  We     shall     study    God 
through  nature  and  through  men  ;  and  a  new  Messiah 
will  not  be  necessary  to  teach  us  miraculously  what  we 
can    learn    of    ourselves   and    by    our    natural    lights." 
Christianity    has    been    a    useful    discipline  ;    but    "our 
education  is  so  advanced  that  henceforth  we  can  be  our 
own  teachers  ;  and,  having  no   need   of  an   extraneous 
inspiration,  we  draw  faith  from  science."^     "  Prayer  is 
good,     doubtless,"    but    it    "has    only    a    mysterious, 
uncertain,    remote   action    on    our   environment."^     All 
this    under    Louis    Philippe,    from    a    professor   at   the 
Ecole  Normale.      Not  to  this  day  has  official  academic 
philosophy  in  Britain  ventured  to  go  so  far.      In  France 
the  brains  were  never  out,  even  under  the  Restoration. 
4.   But    the    one    really  energetic    and    characteristic 
philosophy   produced   in    the    new  France  w^as   that  of 
AuGUSTE  CoMTE,  which  as  set  forth   in   the   Coiirs  de 
Pliilosophie    Positive     (1830-42)    practically     reaffirmed 
while  it  recast  and  supplemented  the  essentials  of  the 
anti-theological  rationalism  of  the  previous  age,  and  in 
that  sense   rebuilt  French   positivism,  giving  that  new 

'  Essai,  cited,  i,  232,  237.  -  Id.  pp.  241-243.  3  Jd.  p,  321. 


ABSTRACT  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS  375 

name  to  the  naturalistic  principle.  Though  Comte's 
direct  following  was  never  large,  it  is  significant  that 
soon  after  the  completion  of  his  Coiirs  we  find  Saisset 
lamenting  that  the  war  between  the  clergy  and  the 
philosophers,  "  suspended  by  the  great  political  commo- 
tion of  1830,"  had  been  "revived  with  a  new  energy."' 
The  later  effort  of  Comte  to  frame  a  politico-ecclesiastical 
system  never  succeeded  beyond  the  formation  of  a 
politically  powerless  sect  ;  but  both  in  France  and 
England  his  philosophy  tinged  all  the  new  thought  of 
his  time,  his  leading  English  adherents  in  particular 
being  among  the  most  esteemed  publicists  of  the  day. 
In  France,  the  general  effect  of  the  rationalistic  move- 
ment had  been  such  that  when  Taine,  under  the  Third 
Empire,  assailed  the  whole  "classic"  school  in  his 
Philosophcs  Classiques  (1857),  his  success  was  at  once 
generally  recognised,  and  a  non-Comtist  positivism  was 
thenceforth  the  ruling  philosophy.  The  same  thing  has 
happened  in  Italy,  where  quite  a  number  of  university 
professors  are  explicitly  positivist  in  their  philosophic 
teaching.^ 

5.  In  Britain,  where  abstract  philosophy  after  Berkeley 
had  been  left  to  Hume  and  the  Scotch  thinkers  who 
opposed  him,  metaphysics  was  for  a  generation  practi- 
cally overridden  by  the  moral  and  social  sciences  ; 
Hartley's  Christian  Materialism  making  small  headway 
as  formulated  by  him.  The  proof  of  the  change  wrought 
in  the  direction  of  native  thought  is  seen  in  the 
personalities  of  the  men  who,  in  the  teeth  of  the 
reaction,  applied  rationalistic  method  to  ethics  and 
psychology.  Bentham  and  James  Mill  were  in  their 
kindred  fields  among  the  most  convinced  and  active 
freethinkers  of  their  day,  the  former  attacking  both 
clericalism    and    orthodoxy  •?   while   the  latter,   no    less 


'  Article  in  1844,  rep.  in  Essais  de  la  philosophie  et  religion,  1845,  p.  i. 

-  Cp.  Professor  Botta's  chapter  in  Ueberweg's  Hist,  of  Philos.  ii,  513- 
516. 

3  In  his  Church  of  Englandism  and  its  Catechism  Examined  {1818)  and 
Not  Paul  but  Jesus  (1823),  "  by  Gamaliel  Smith." 


376  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

pronounced  in  his  private  opinions,  more  cautiously 
built  up  a  rigorously  naturalistic  psychology  in  his 
Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind  (1829).  Bentham's 
utilitarianism  was  so  essentially  anti-Christian  that  he 
could  hardly  have  been  more  disliked  by  discerning 
theists  if  he  had  avowed  his  share  in  the  authorship 
of  the  atheistic  Analysis  of  the  Influence  of  Natural 
Religion,  which,  elaborated  from  his  manuscript  by  no 
less  a  thinker  than  George  Grote,  was  published  in 
1822  ;'  but  his  ostensible  restriction  of  his  logic  to 
practical  problems  of  law  and  morals  secured  him  a 
wider  influence  than  was  wielded  by  any  of  the  higher 
publicists  of  his  day.  The  whole  tendency  of  his 
school  was  intensely  rationalistic  ;  and  it  indirectly 
affected  all  thought  by  its  treatment  of  economics, 
which  from  Hume  and  Smith  onwards  had  been  practi- 
cally divorced  from  theology.  Even  clerical  economists, 
such  as  Malthus  and  Chalmers,  alike  orthodox  in 
religion,  furthered  naturalism  in  philosophy  in  spite  of 
themselves.  A  not  unnatural  result  was  a  religious  fear 
of  all  reasoning  whatever,  and  a  disparagement  of  the 
very  faculty  of  reason.  This,  however,  was  sharply 
resisted  by  the  more  cultured  champions  of  orthodoxy,^ 
to  the  great  advantage  of  critical  discussion. 

6.  When  English  metaphysical  philosophy  revived 
with  Sir  William  Hamilton  and  Dean  Mansel,  they  gave 
the  decisive  proof  that  the  orthodox  cause  had  been 
philosophically  lost  while  being  socially  won,  since  their 
theism  emphasised  in  the  strongest  way  the  negative 
criticism  of  Kant,  leaving  Deity  void  of  all  cognisable 
qualities.  Their  metaphysic  thus  served  as  an  open  and 
avowed  basis  for  the  naturalistic  i^/r^-^  Principles {1^60-62) 

'  Under  the  pseudonym  of  Philip  Beauchamp.  See  The  Minor  Works 
of  George  Grote,  edited  by  Professor  Bain,  1873,  p.  18  ;  Athenceum, 
May  31,  1873;  J.  S.  Mill's  Autobiography,  p.  69;  and  Three  Essays  on 
Religion,  p.  76.  This  remarkable  treatise,  which  g-reatly  influenced 
Mill,  is  the  most  stringent  attack  made  on  theism  between  d'Holbach 
and  Feuerbach. 

-  Cp.  Morell,  Spec.  Philos.  of  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  ii, 
620  ;  and  Life  and  Corr.  of  Whately,  by  E.  Jane  Whately,  abridged  ed. 
P-  159- 


ABSTRACT  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ETHICS  377 


of  Herbert  Spencer,  wherein,  with  an  unfortunate  laxity 
of  metaphysic  on  the  author's  own  part,  and  a  no  less 
unfortunate  lack  of  consistency  as  regards  the  criticism  of 
religious  and  anti-religious  positions,'  the  new  cosmic 
conceptions  are  unified  in  a  masterly  conception  of  evolu- 
tion as  a  universal  law.  Strictly,  the  book  is  a  "  System 
of  Nature"  rather  than  a  philosophy  in  the  sense  of  a 
study  of  the  grounds  and  limitations  of  knowledge  :  that 
is  to  say,  it  is  on  the  former  ground  alone  that  it  is 
coherent  and  original.  But  its  very  imperfections  on  the 
other  side  have  probably  promoted  its  reception  among 
minds  already  shaken  in  theology  by  the  progress  of 
concrete  science  ;  while  at  the  same  time  such  imper- 
fections give  a  hostile  foothold  to  the  revived  forms  of 
theism.  Even  these,  however,  in  particular  the  neo- 
Hegelian  svstem  associated  with  the  name  of  the  late 
Professor  T.  H.  Green,  fail  to  give  any  shelter  to  Chris- 
tian orthodoxy.  In  England,  as  on  the  Continent,  the 
bulk  of  philosophical  activity  is  now  dissociated  from 
the  Christian  creed. ^ 

7.  The  effect  of  the  ethical  pressure  of  the  deistic 
attack  on  the  intelligence  of  educated  Christians  was 
fully  seen  even  within  the  Anglican  Church  before  the 
middle  of  the  century.  The  unstable  Coleridge,  who  had 
gone  round  the  whole  compass  of  opinion^  when  he  began 
to  wield  an  influence  over  the  more  sensitive  of  the 
younger  churchmen,  was  strenuous  in  a  formal  affirma- 
tion of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  but  no  less  anxious  to 
modify  the  doctrine  of  Atonement  on  which  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Trinity   was  historically  founded.      In  the 

^  Mr.  Spencer  has  avowed  in  his  Autobiography  (ii,  75)  what  might  be 
surmised  by  critical  readers,  that  he  wrote  the  First  Part  of  First  Prin- 
ciples in  order  to  guard  against  the  charge  of  "materialism."  This 
motive  led  him  to  misrepresent  "  atheism,"  and  there  was  a  touch  ot 
retribution  in  the  general  disregard  of  his  disavowal  of  materialism,  at 
which  he  expresses  surprise.  The  broad  fact  remains  that  for  prudential 
reasons  he  set  forth  at  the  ver}^  outset  of  his  system  a  set  of  conclusions 
which  could  properly  be  reached  only  at  the  end,  if  at  all. 

^  For  instance,  the  Appearance  and  Reality  of  Mr.  F.  Bradley.  See 
pp.  448,  500,  509,  558,  3rd  ed.  _ 

3  As  to  his  fluctuations,  which  lasted  till  his  death,  cp.  the  author  s 
Nc-w  Essays  towards  a  Critical  Method,  1897,  pp.  144-7,  I49-I54'  168-9. 


378  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  icjtli  CENTURY 


hands  of  Maurice,  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice  became  one 
of  example  to  the  end  of  subjective  regeneration  of  the 
sinner.  This  view,  which  was  developed  by  John  the 
Scot — perhaps  from  hints  in  Origen' — and  again  by  Ber- 
nardino Ochino,-  is  specially  associated  with  the  teach- 
ing of  Coleridge  ;  but  it  was  quite  independently  held  in 
England  before  him  by  the  Anglican  Dr.  Parr  (1747- 
1825),  who  appears  to  have  been  heterodox  upon  most 
points  in  the  orthodox  creed, ^  and  who,  like  Servetus 
and  Coleridge  and  Hegel,  held  by  a  modal  as  against  a 
"personal"  Trinity.  Such  Unitarian  accommodations 
presumably  reconciled  to  Christianity  and  the  Church 
many  who  would  otherwise  have  abandoned  them  ;  and 
the  only  orthodox  rebuttal  seems  to  have  been  the  old  and 
dangerous  resort  to  the  Butlerian  argument,  to  the  effect 
that  the  God  of  Nature  shows  no  such  benign  fatherli- 
ness  as  the  anti-sacrificial  school  ascribe  to  him.-* 

8.  The  same  pressure  of  moral  argument  was  doubt- 
less potent  in  the  development  of  "  Socinian  "  or  other 
rationalistic  views  in  the  Protestant  churches  of  Germany, 
Holland,  Hungary,  Switzerland,  and  France  in  the  first 
half  of  the  century.  Such  development  had  gone  so  far 
that  by  the  middle  of  the  century  the  churches  in  question 
were,  to  the  eye  of  an  English  evangelical  champion, 
predominantly  rationalistic,  and  in  that  sense  "  infidel. "^ 
Reactions  have  been  claimed  before  and  since  ;  but  in 
our  own  age  there  is  little  to  show  for  them.  In  the 
United  States,  again,  the  ethical  element  probably  pre- 
dominated in  the  recoil  of  Emerson  from  Christian 
orthodoxy  even  of  the  Unitarian  stamp,  as  well  as  in  the 
heresy   of  Theodore   Parker,  whose  aversion   to  the 

'  Baur,  Die  christlichc  Lehrc  dcr  Versuhnung,  1838,  pp.  54-63,  1 24-131. 

2  Benrath,  Bernardino  Ochino,  Eng;.  trans,  pp.  284-7. 

3  Field's  Memoirs  of  Parr,  1828,  ii,  363,  374-9. 

4  See  Pearson's  Infidelity,  its  Aspects,  Causes,  and  Agencies,  1853, 
p.  215  sq.  The  position  of  Maurice  and  Parr  (associated  with  other  and 
later  names)  is  there  treated  as  one  of  the  prevailing  forms  of  "  infidelity," 
and  called  spiritualism.  In  Germany,  the  orthodox  made  the  same 
dang-erous  answer  to  the  theistic  criticism.  See  the  Memoirs  of  F. 
Perthes,  Eng.  trans.  2nd  ed.  ii,  242-3. 

5  Pearson,  as  cited,  pp.  560-2,  568-579,  583-4. 


THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  SCIENCES  379 

theistic  ethic  of  Jonathan  Edwards  was  so  strong  as  to 
make  him  blind  to  the  reasoning  power  of  that  stringent 
Calvinist.  At  the  same  time,  all  such  moral  accommo- 
dations in  Protestant  churches,  while  indirectly  coun- 
tenancing freethought,  have  served  to  maintain  Christian 
organisations,  with  their  too  common  accompaniments 
of  social  intolerance,  as  against  more  open  freethinking  ; 
and  in  themselves  they  represent  a  partial  perversion  of 
the  ethics  of  the  intellectual  life. 

§  V.   The  Sociological  Sciences. 

I.  A  rationalistic  treatment  of  human  history  had 
been  explicit  or  implicit  in  the  whole  literature  of 
Deism  ;  and  had  been  attempted  with  various  degrees 
of  success  by  Bodin,  Vico,  Montesquieu,  Mandeville, 
Hume,  Smith,  Voltaire,  and  Condorcet,  as  well  as  by 
lesser  men.  So  clear  had  been  the  lead  to  naturalistic 
views  of  social  efrowth  in  the  Politics  of  Aristotle,  and 
so  strong  the  influence  of  the  new  naturalistic  spirit, 
that  it  is  seen  even  in  the  work  of  Goguet  (1769),  who 
sets  out  as  biblically  as  Bossuet ;  while  in  Germany 
Herder  and  Kant  framed  really  luminous  generalisations; 
and  a  whole  group  of  sociological  writers  rose  up  in  the 
Scotland  of  the  middle  and  latter  parts  of  the  century. 
Here  again  there  was  reaction  ;  but  in  France  the  ortho- 
dox Guizot  did  much  to  promote  broader  views  than  his 
own  ;  EusEBE  Salverte  in  his  essay  De  la  Civilisation 
(1813)  made  a  highly  intelligent  effort  towards  a  general 
view  ;  and  Charles  Comte  in  his  Traite  de  Legislation 
(1826)  made  a  marked  scientific  advance  on  the  sugges- 
tive work  of  Herder.  As  we  have  seen,  the  eclectic 
Jouffroy  put  human  affairs  in  the  sphere  of  natural  law 
equally  with  cosmic  phenomena.  At  length,  in  the  great 
work  of  AuGUSTE  Comte,  scientific  method  was  applied 
so  effectively  and  concretely  to  the  general  problem  that, 
despite  his  serious  fallacies,  social  science  again  took 
rank  as  a  solid  study.  In  England  and  America,  by  the 
works  of  Draper  and  Buckle,  in  the  sixth  and  later 
decades  of  the  century,  the  conception  of  law  in  human 


380  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

history  was  at  length  widely  popularised,  to  the  due 
indignation  of  the  supernaturalists,  who  saw  the  last 
great  field  of  natural  phenomena  passing  like  others 
into  the  realm  of  science.  Draper's  avowed  theism 
partly  protected  him  from  attack  ;  but  Buckle's  straight- 
forward attacks  on  creeds  and  on  churches  brought  upon 
him  a  peculiarly  fierce  hostility,  which  was  unmollified 
by  his  incidental  avowal  of  belief  in  a  future  life.  For 
long  this  hostility  told  against  his  sociological  teaching. 
Mr.  Spencer's  Principles  of  Sociology  nevertheless 
clinched  the  scientific  claim  by  taking  sociological  law 
for  granted  ;  and  the  new  science  has  continually  pro- 
gressed in  acceptance.  In  the  hands  of  all  its  leading 
exponents  in  all  countries — Lester  Ward,  Giddings, 
,Guyau,  Letourneau,  Tarde,  Ferri,  Durkheim,  De  Greef, 
Gumplowicz,  Lilienfeld,  Schaffle — it  is  entirely  natural- 
istic, though  some  Catholic  professors  continue  to  inject 
into  it  theological  assumptions.  It  cannot  be  said,  how- 
ever, that  a  general  doctrine  of  social  evolution  is  even 
yet  fully  established.  The  problem  is  complicated  by 
the  profoundly  contentious  issues  of  practical  politics  ; 
and  in  the  resulting  diffidence  of  official  teachers  there 
arises  a  notable  opening  for  obscurantism,  which  has 
been  duly  forthcoming.  In  the  first  half  of  the  century, 
such  an  eminent  churchman  as  Dean  Milman  incurred 
at  the  hands  of  J.  H.  Newman  and  others  the  charge  of 
writing  the  history  of  the  Jews  and  of  early  Christianity 
in  a  rationalistic  spirit,  presenting  religion  as  a  "human" 
phenomenon.'  Later  churchmen,  with  all  their  prepara- 
tion, have  rarely  gone  further. 

2.  Two  lines  of  scientific  study,  it  would  appear,  must 
be  thoroughly  followed  up  before  the  ground  can  be 
pronounced  clear  for  authoritative  conclusions — those 
of  anthropological  archeology  (including  comparative 
mythology  and  comparative  hierology)  and  economic 
analysis.  On  both  lines  great  progress  has  been  made  ; 
but  on  both  occurs  a  resistance  of  vested  interests.     Such 

'  See  The  Dytiantics  of  Religion,  pp.  227-233. 


THE  SOCIOLOGICAL  SCIENCES  381 

Students  as  Tylor,  Waitz,  and  Spencer  have  sifted 
and  classified  our  knowledge  as  to  primitive  social  life; 
and   a    whole    line   of  comparative    mythologists,  from 
Dupuis   and   Volney  to    Mannhardt   and    Frazer,  have 
enlarged    and    classified    our    knowledge    of    primitive 
reliorious  norms  and  tendencies.     As  regards  economics, 
less  work  has  been  done.     Buckle  applied  the  economic 
principle  with  force  and  accuracy  to  the  case  of  the  great 
primary  civilisations,  but  only  in  a  partial  and  biassed 
way  to  modern  history  ;  and  the  school  of  Marx  incurs 
reaction    by  applying   it   somewhat    fanatically.     Thus 
economic   interests  and  clericalism  join  hands  to  repel 
an    economic  theory  of  history  ;    and    clericalism  itself 
represents  a  vast  economic  interest  when  it  wards  off  the 
full  application  of  the  principle  of  comparative  mytho- 
logy to   Christian  lore.     The  really  great  performance 
of  Dupuis  was  not  scientifically  improved  upon,  Strauss 
failing  to  profit  by  it.     In  Strauss's  hands  the  influence  of 
Pagan   myth  counts   almost   for  nothing ;  and    Renan 
practically  waived  the  whole  principle.     The  searching 
anthropology  of  Ghillany,  again,  as  we  have  seen,  made 
no  general  impression  on  the  theological  world,  which  had 
not  in  his  day  begun  to  realise  that  there  is  an  anthro- 
pology.    Thus  the  "  higher  criticism  "  of  both  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  remains  radically  imperfect  ;  and 
specialists   in    mythology  are  found  either  working  all 
round  Gospel  myth  without  once  touching  it,  or  unscien- 
tifically  claiming  to  put   it,  as  "religion,"  on   a  plane 
above  science.     All  scientific  thought,  however,  turns  in 
the  direction  of  a  complete  law  of  historical  evolution  ; 
and   such  a  law  must  necessarily  make  an  end  of  the 
supernaturalist   conception   as  regards   every  aspect  of 
human  life,  ethical,  social,  religious,  and  political.     The 
struggle   lies  finally  between  the  scientific  or  veridical 
instinct  and  the  sinister  interests  founded  on  economic 
endowments,  and  buttressed  by  use  and  wont. 

3.  Psychology,  considered  as  a  department  of  anthro- 
pology, may  perhaps  as  fitly  be  classed  among  the 
sociological  sciences  as  under   philosophy ;    though    it 


382  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igfh  CENTURY 

Strictly  overlaps  on  that  as  well  as  on  biology.      How- 
ever defined,  it  has  counted  for  much  in  the  dissolution 
of  supernaturalist  beliefs,  from  the  tentatives  of  Diderot 
to  the  latest  refinements  of  physiological  experiment.      It 
was  the  perception  of  this  tendency  that,  two  generations 
ago,    secured    the   abandonment  of  phrenology   to    the 
disastrous  devotion  of  amateurs,  after  men  like  George 
and  Andrew  Combe,  sincere  theists,  as  were  Gall  and 
Spurzheim  before  them,  had  made  it  a  basis  of  a  great 
propaganda   of    social    and    educational    reform.     The 
development  of  the  principle  of  brain  localisation,  how- 
ever, is  only  a  question  of  time,  there  being  between  the 
procedure  of  the  early  scientific  phrenologists  and  those 
of  the  later  anatomists  only  a  difference  of  method.     All 
the  ethical   implications    of  phrenology   belong   to    the 
science  of  brain  in  any  of  its  developments,  being  indeed 
implicit    in    the    most   general    principles    of  biological 
science  ;  and  the  abstention  of  later  specialists  from  all 
direct  application  of  their  knowledge  to   religious  and 
ethical  issues  is  simply  the  condition  of  their  economic 
existence  as  members  of  university  staffs.     But  the  old 
principle,  ubi  tres  fuedici,  duo  athei,  is  more  nearly  true 
to-day  than  ever,  being   countervailed  only  by  the  fact 
signified  just  as  truly  in  the  other  saw,  itbi  panis^  ibi 
Dens.     While  the  priest's  bread  depends  on  his  creed, 
the  physician's  must  be  similarly  implicated. 

§  VI.  Poetry  and  Fine  Letters. 

I.  The  whole  imaginative  literature  of  Europe,  in  the 
generation  after  the  French  Revolution,  reveals  directly 
or  indirectly  the  transmutation  that  the  eighteenth 
century  had  worked  in  religious  thought.  In  France, 
the  literary  reaction  is  one  of  the  first  factors  in  the 
orthodox  revival.  Its  leader  and  type  was  Chateau- 
briand, in  whose  typical  work,  the  Genie  da  C/iris- 
tiauisme  (1802),  lies  the  proof  that,  whatever  might  be 
the  "  shallowness  "  of  Voltairism,  it  was  profundity 
beside  the  philosophy  of  the  majority  who  repelled  it. 
On  one  who  now  reads  it  with  the  slightest  scientific 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  383 


preparation  the   book  makes  an  impression  in  parts  of 
something  like  imbecility.     The  handling  of  the  scien- 
tific question  at  the  threshold  of  the  inquiry  is  that  of  a 
man  incapable  of  a  scientific  idea.     All  the  accumulating 
evidence  of  geology  and  palaeontology  is  disposed  of  by 
the  grotesque  theorem  that  God  made  the  world  out  of 
nothing  with  all   the  marks  of  antiquity  upon   it — the 
oaks  at  the  start  bearing  "  last  year's  nests  " — on  the 
ground  that,  "  if  the  world  were  not  at  once  young  and 
old,  the   great,  the  serious,  the  moral  would  disappear 
from  nature,  for  these  sentiments  by  their  essence  attach 
to  antique  things."'     In  the  same  fashion  the  fable  of 
the   serpent    is   with  perfect  gravity  homologated   as  a 
literal  truth,  on  the  strength  of  an  anecdote  about  the 
charming  of  a   rattlesnake  with  music.-     It  is  humiliat- 
ing, but  instructive,  to  realise  that  only  a  century  ago  a 
"  Christian  reaction,"  in  a  civilised  country,  was  inspired 
by  such  an  order  of   ideas  ;  and  that  in  the  nation  of 
Laplace,  with  his  theory  in  view,  it  was  the  fashion  thus 
to  prattle  in  the  taste  of  the   Dark  Ages.^     The  book  is 
merely  the  eloquent  expression  of  a  nervous  recoil  from 
everything  savouring  of  cool  reason  and  clear  thought, 
a  recoil  partly  initiated  by  the  sheer  stress  of  excitement 
of  the  near  past  ;  partly  fostered  by  the  vague  belief  that 
freethinking  in   religion    had    caused   the    Revolution  ; 
partly  enhanced  by  the  tendency  of  every  warlike  period 
to  develop  emotional  rather  than  reflective  life.     What 
was  really  masterly  in  Chateaubriand  was  the  style ;  and 
sentimental  pietism  had  now  the  prestige  of  fine  writing, 
so  long  the  specialty  of  the  other  side.     Yet  a  genera- 
tion of  monarchism    served    to  wear  out   the    ill-based 
credit  of  the  literary  reaction  ;  and  belles  lettres  began  to 
be   rationalistic  as  soon  as  politics  began  again  to  be 
radical. 

Thus  the   prestige  of  the    neo-Christian    school  was 

'  Ptie.  i,  liv,  i,  ch.  5.  =  Id.  i,  liv.  iii,  ch.  2. 

3  It  is  further  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold 
saw  fit  to  defend  Chateaubriand,  calling-  him  "great,"  when  his  fame 
was  being  undone  by  common-sense. 


384  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


already  spent  before  the  revolution  of  1848;'  and  the 
inordinate  vanity  of  Chateaubriand,  who  died  in  that 
year,  had  undone  his  special  influence  still  earlier.  For 
the  rest,  the  belief  that  he  had  brought  back  Christianity 
to  a  France  denuded  of  worship  by  atheists  is  part  of 
the  mythology  of  the  Revolution.  Already  in  February, 
1795,  on  the  principle  of  a  separation  between  church 
and  State,  public  worship  had  been  put  on  a  perfectly 
free  footing  ;  and  in  1796  the  36,000  parishes  were 
served  by  25,000  cures.'  Napoleon's  arrangement  with 
the  Papacy  had  restored  the  old  political  connections  ; 
and  Chateaubriand  had  created  merely  a  literary  mode 
and  sentiment. 

2.  The  literary  history  of  France  since  his  death 
decides  the  question,  so  far  as  it  can  be  thus  decided. 
From  1848  till  our  own  day  it  has  been  predominantly 
naturalistic  and  non-religious.  After  Guizot  and  the 
Thierrys,  the  nearest  approach  to  Christianity  in  a 
French  historian  is  perhaps  in  the  case  of  Edgar 
Quinet.  Michelet  was  a  mere  heretic  in  the  eyes  of 
the  faithful,  Saisset  describing  his  book  Du  Pretre^  de 
la  Femme,  et  de  la  Famille  (1845),  as  a  "  renaissance  of 
Voltaireanism."3  His  whole  brilliant  History,  indeed,  is 
from  beginning  to  end  rationalistic,  challenging  as  it 
does  all  the  decorous  traditions,  exposing  the  failure  of 
the  faith  to  civilise,  pronouncing  that  "the  monastic 
Middle  Age  is  an  age  of  idiots  "  and  the  scholastic 
world  which  followed  it  an  age  of  artificially  formed 
fools,"*  flouting  dogma  and  discrediting  creed  over  each 
of  their  miscarriages.  And  he  was  popular  not  only 
because  of  his  vividness   and    unfailing  freshness,  but 

'  C.  Wordsworth,  Diary  in  France,  1845,  PP-  55"^'  '24,  204. 

^  See  the  details  in  the  Appendice  to  the  Etudes  of  M.  Gazier,  before 
cited.  That  writer's  account  is  the  more  decisive  seeingf  that  his  bias  is 
clerical,  and  that,  writing  before  M.  Aulard,  he  had  to  a  considerable 
extent  retained  the  old  illusion  as  to  the  "  decreeing-  of  atheism  "  by  the 
Convention  (p.  313).  See  pp.  230-260  as  to  the  readjustment  effected  by 
Gri^gfoire,  while  the  conservative  clergy  were  still  striving  to  undo  the 
Revolution. 

3  Essais  sur  la  philosophie  et  la  religion,  1845,  p.  193. 

•*  Histoire,  torn,  vii,  Renaissance,  introd.  §  6. 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  385 


because  his  convictions  were  those  of  the  best  intel- 
ligence around  him.  In  poetry  and  fiction  the  predomi- 
nance of  one  or  other  shade  of  freethinkine^  is  siernal. 
Balzac,  who  grew  up  in  the  age  of  reaction,  makes 
essentially  for  rationalism  by  his  intense  analysis  ;  and 
after  him  the  difficulty  is  to  find  a  great  French  novelist 
who  is  not  frankly  rationalistic.  George  Sand  will 
probably  not  be  claimed  by  orthodoxy  ;  and  Beyle, 
Constant,  Flaubert,  Merimee,  Zola,  Daudet,  Mau- 
passant, and  the  De  Goncourts  make  a  list  against 
which  can  be  set  only  the  names  of  the  distinguished 
decadent  Huysmans,  who  has  become  a  Trappist  after 
a  life  marked  by  a  philosophy  of  an  extremely  different 
complexion,  and  of  M.  Bourget,  an  artist  of  the  second 
order. 

3.  In  French  poetry  the  case  is  hardly  otherwise. 
Beranger,  who  passed  for  a  Voltairean,  did  indeed 
claim  to  have  "  saved  from  the  wreck  an  indestructible 
belief";'  and  Lamartine  goes  to  the  side  of  Christianity  ; 
but  De  Musset,  the  most  inspired  of  decadents^  was  no 
more  Christian  than  Heine,  save  for  what  a  critic  has 
called  "  la  banale  religiosite  de  V  Espoir  en  Dieu'"  ;^  and 
the  pessimist  Baudelaire  had  not  even  that  to  show. 
De  Musset's  absurd  attack  on  Voltaire  in  his  Byronic 
poem,  Rolla,  well  deserves  the  same  epithets.  It  is  a 
mere  product  of  hysteria,  representing  neither  know- 
ledge nor  reflection.  The  grandiose  theism  of  Victor 
Hugo,  again,  is  stamped  only  with  his  own  image  and 
superscription  ;  and  in  his  great  contemporary  Leconte 
DE  Lisle  we  have  one  of  the  most  convinced  and  aggres- 
sive freethinkers  of  the  century,  a  fine  scholar  and  a  self- 
controlled  pessimist,  who  felt  it  well  worth  his  while 
to  write  a  little  Popular  History  of  Christianity  (1871) 
which  would  have  delighted  d'Holbach.  It  is  signifi- 
cant, on  the  other  hand,  that  the  exquisite  religious 
verse  of  Verlaine  was  the  product  of  an  incurable 
neuropath,  like  the  later  work  of  Huysmans,  and  stands 

'  Letter  to  Sainte-Beuve,  cited  by  Levallois,  Sainte-Beuve,  1872.  p.  14. 
-  Lanson,  Hist,  de  hi  litt.  fraii^aisCy  p.  951. 

VOL.    II  2C 


386  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


for  decadence  pure  and  simple.  While  French  belles 
lettres  thus  in  general  made  for  rationalism,  criticism 
was  naturally  not  behindhand.  Sainte-Beuve,  the  most 
widely  appreciative  though  not  the  most  scientific  or 
just  of  critics,  had  only  a  literary  sympathy  with  the 
religious  types  over  whom  he  spent  so  much  effusive 
research  ;'  Edmond  Scherer  was  an  unbeliever  almost 
against  his  will  ;  Taine,  though  reactionary  on  political 
grounds  in  his  latter  years,  was  the  typical  French 
rationalist  of  his  time ;  and  though  M.  Brunetiere, 
whose  preferences  are  all  for  Bossuet,  makes  "  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  science  "  the  text  of  his  somewhat  facile 
philosophy,  the  most  scientific  and  philosophic  head  in 
the  whole  line  of  French  critics,  the  late  Emile  Henne- 
QUIN,  was  wholly  a  rationalist  ;  and  even  the  rather 
reactionary  Jules  Lemaitre  has  not  maintained  his  early 
attitude  of  austerity  towards  Renan. 

4.  In  England  it  was  due  above  all  to  Shelley  that 
the  verv  aere  of  reaction  was  confronted  with  unbelief  in 
lyric  form.  His  immature  Queen  Mab  was  vital  enough 
with  conviction  to  serve  as  an  inspiration  to  a  whole 
host  of  unlettered  freethinkers  not  only  in  its  own 
generation  but  in  the  next.  Its  notes  preserved,  and 
greatly  expanded,  the  tract  entitled  The  Necessity  of 
Atheism^  for  which  he  was  expelled  from  Oxford  ;  and 
against  his  will  it  became  a  people's  book,  the  law 
refusing  him  copyright  in  his  own  work,  on  the 
memorable  principle  that  there  could  be  no  "protection" 
for  a  book  setting  forth  pernicious  opinions.  Whether 
he  would  not  in  later  life,  had  he  survived,  have  passed 
to  a  species  of  mystic  Christianity,  reacting  like  Cole- 
ridge, but  with  a  necessary  difference,  is  a  question 
raised  by  parts  of  the  Hellas.     But  Shelley's  work,  as 

'  "  L' incredulity  de  Sainte-Beuve  t^tait  sincere,  radicale,  et  absolue. 
EUe  a  ett^  invariable  et  invincible  pendant  trente  ans.  V'oila  la  v^rit^  " 
(Jules  Levallois,  Saint-Bcuve,  1872,  prt^f.  p.  xxxiii).  M.  Levallois,  who 
writes  as  a  Christian,  was  one  of  Sainte-Beuve's  secretaries.  M.  Zola, 
who  spoke  of  the  famous  critic's  rationalism  as  '•  une  nt^gation  n'osant 
conclure,"  admitted  later  that  it  was  hardly  possible  for  him  to  speak 
more  boldly  than  be  did  {Documents  Littiraires,  1881,  pp.  314,  325-8). 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  387 

done,  sufficed  to  keep  for  radicalism  and  rationalism  the 
crown  of  soni^  as  against  the  Tory  orthodoxy  of  the 
elderly  Wordsworth  and  of  Southey  ;  and  Coleridge's 
zeal  for  (amended)  dogma  came  upon  him  after  his  hour 
of  poetic  transfiguration  was  past. 

And  even  Coleridge,  who  held  the  heresies  of  a  modal 
Trinity  and  the  non-expiatory  character  of  the  death  of  Christ, 
was  widely  distrusted  by  the  pious,  and  expressed  himself 
privately  in  terms  which  would  have  outraged  them.  Miracles, 
he  declared,  "are  supererogatory.  The  law  of  God  and  the 
great  principles  of  the  Christian  religion  would  have  been  the 
same  had  Christ  never  assumed  humanity.  It  is  for  these 
things,  and  for  such  as  these,  for  telling  unwelcome  truths,  that 
1  have  been  termed  an  atheist.  It  is  for  these  opinions  that 
William  Smith  assured  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  that  I 
was  (what  half  the  clergy  are  in  their  lives)  an  atheist.  Little 
do  these  men  know  what  atheism  is.  Not  one  man  in  a 
thousand  has  either  strength  of  mind  or  goodness  of  heart  to 
be  an  atheist.  I  repeat  it.  Not  one  man  in  ten  thousand  has 
goodness  of  heart  or  strength  of  mind  to  be  an  atheist." 
Allsopp's  Letters,  Conversations,  and  Recollections  of  S.  T. 
Coleridge,  3rd  ed.  1864,  p.  47. 

On  the  other  side,  Scott's  honest  but  unintellectual 
romanticism,  as  we  know  from  Newman,  certainly 
favoured  the  Tractarian  reaction,  to  which  it  was  aesthe- 
tically though  hardly  emotionally  akin  ;  but  the  far 
more  potent  influence  of  Byron,  too  wayward  to  hold  a 
firm  philosophy,  but  too  intensely  alive  to  realities  to  be 
capable  of  Scott's  feudal  orthodoxy,  must  have  counted 
for  heresy  even  in  England,  and  was  one  of  the  literary 
forces  of  revolutionary  revival  for  the  whole  of  Europe. 
Though  he  never  came  to  a  clear  atheistical  decision  as 
did  Shelley,'  and  often  in  private  gave  himself  out  for  a 
Calvinist,  he  so  handled  theological  problems  in  his 
Cain  that  he,  like  Shelley,  was  refused  copyright  in  his 
work  ;-  and  it  was  widely  appropriated  for  freethinkers' 

'  At  the  ag-e  of  twenty-five  we  find  him  writing-  to  Gifford  :  "  I  am  no 
big-ot  to  infidelity,  and  did  not  expect  that  because  I  doubted  the  immor- 
tality of  man  I  should  be  charged  with  denying  the  existence  of  God  " 
(letter  of  June  i8th,  1813). 

^  By  the  Court  of  Chancery,  in  1822,  the  year  in  which  copyright  was 
refused  to  the  Lectures  of  Dr.  Lawrence.  Harriet  Martineau,  History 
of  the  Peace,  ii,  87, 


388  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 


purposes.  The  orthodox  Southey  was  on  the  same 
grounds  denied  the  right  to  suppress  his  early  revolu- 
tionary drama,  Wat  Tyler,  which  accordingly  was  made 
to  do  duty  in  Radical  propaganda  by  freethinking 
publishers.  Keats,  again,  though  he  melodiously 
declaimed,  in  a  boyish  mood,  against  the  scientific 
analysis  of  the  rainbow,  and  though  he  never  assented 
to  Shelley's  impeachments  of  Christianity,  was  in  no 
active  sense  a  believer  in  it,  and  after  his  long  sickness 
met  death  gladly  without  the  "consolations"  ascribed 
to  creed.' 

5.  Nor  has  the  balance  of  English  poetry  ever  reverted 
to  the  side  of  faith.  Even  Tennyson,  who  more  than 
once  struck  at  rationalism  below  the  belt,  is  in  his  own 
despite  the  poet  of  doubt  as  much  as  of  credence, 
however  he  might  wilfully  attune  himself  to  the  key  of 
faith  ;  and  the  unparalleled  optimism  of  Browning 
evolved  a  form  of  Christianity  sufficiently  alien  to  the 
historic  creed.-  In  Clough  and  Matthew  Arnold, 
again,  we  have  the  positive  record  of  surrendered  faith. 
Alongside  of  Arnold,  Mr.  Swinburne  put  into  his 
verse  the  freethinking  temper  that  Leconte  de  Lisle 
reserved  for  prose  ;  and  the  ill-starred  but  finely  gifted 
James  ThOxMSON  ("  B.V.")  was  no  less  definitely  though 
despairingly  an  unbeliever.  Among  our  younger  poets, 
finally,  the  balance  is  pretty  much  the  same  ;  Mr. 
Watson  declaring  in  worthily  noble  diction  for  a  high 
agnosticism,  and  Mr.  Davidson  defying  orthodox  ethics 
in  the  name  of  his  very  antinomian  theology  Y'  while  on 
the  side  of  the  regulation  religion — since  Mr.  Yeats  is 
but  a  stray  Druid — can  be  cited  at  best  the  regimental 
psalmody  of  Mr.  Kipling,  lyrist  of  trumpet  and  drum  ; 

'  W.  Sharp,  Eife  of  Severn,  1892,  pp.  86-7,  90,  1 17-1 18. 

■^  Cp.  Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr's  article  on  The  Religious  Opitiions  of 
Robert  Broiiming  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv^  December,  1891,  p.  87S  ; 
and  the  present  writer's  Tennyson  and  Broivning  as  Teachers^  '903- 

3  Recently,  apropos  of  his  Theativcraf,  which  he  pronounces  "  the 
most  profound  and  original  of  English  books,"  Mr.  Davidson  has  in  a 
newspaper  article  proclaimed  himself  on  socio-political  grounds  an  anti- 
Christian.  "I  take  the  first  resolute  step  out  of  Christendom,"  is  his 
c\a.\m{Daily  Chronicle,  December  20th,  1905). 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  389 

the  Stained-glass  Mariolatries  of  Mr.  Francis  Thompson; 
and  the  Godism  of  Mr.  Henley,  whereat  the  prosaic 
godly  look  askance. 

6.  One  of  the  best-beloved  names  in  English  literature, 
Charles  Lamb,  is  on  several  counts  to  be  numbered 
with  those  of  the  freethinkers  of  his  day — who  included 
Godwin  and  Hazlitt — though  he  had  no  part  in  any 
direct  propaganda.  Himself  at  most  a  Unitarian,  but 
not  at  all  given  to  argument  on  points  of  faith,  he  did 
his  work  for  reason  partly  by  way  of  the  subtle  and 
winning  humanism  of  such  an  essay  as  iVe7y  Year's  Eve, 
which  seems  to  have  been  what  brought  upon  him  the 
pedantically  pious  censure  of  Southey,  apparently  for  its 
lack  of  allusion  to  a  future  state;  partly  by  his  delicately- 
entitled  letter,  The  Tombs  in  the  Abbey,  in  which  he 
replied  to  Southey 's  stricture.  *'  A  book  which  wants 
only  a  sounder  religious  feeling  to  be  as  delightful  as  it 
is  original  "  had  been  Southey's  pompous  criticism,  in  a 
paper  on  Infidelity.  In  his  reply.  Lamb  commented  on 
Southey's  life-long  habit  of  scoffing  at  the  Church  of 
Rome,  and  gravely  repudiated  the  test  of  orthodoxy  for 
human  character. 

Lamb's  words  are  not  generally  known,  and  are  worth 
remembering-.  "  I  own,"  he  wrote,  "  I  never  could  thuik  so 
considerably  of  myself  as  to  decline  the  society  of  an  agreeable 
or  worthy  man  upon  difference  of  opinion  only.  The  impedi- 
ments and  the  facilitations  to  a  sound  belief  are  various  and 
inscrutable  as  the  heart  of  man.  Some  believe  upon  weak 
principles  ;  others  cannot  feel  the  efficacy  of  the  strongest. 
One  of  the  most  candid,  most  upright,  and  single-meaning  men 
I  ever  knew  was  the  late  Thomas  Holcroft.  I  believe  he  never 
said  one  thing  and  meant  another  in  his  life  ;  and,  as  near  as 
I  can  guess,  he  never  acted  otherwise  than  with  the  most 
scrupulous  attention  to  conscience.  Ought  we  to  wish  the 
character  false  for  the  sake  of  a  hollow  compliment  to  Chris- 
tianity ?  "  Of  the  freethinking  and  unpopular  Hazlitt,  who  had 
soured  towards  Lamb  in  his  per\'erse  way,  the  essayist  spoke 
still  more  generously.  Of  Leigh  Hunt  he  speaks  more  criti- 
cally, but  with  the  same  resolution  to  stand  by  a  man  known  as 
a  heretic.  But  the  severest  flout  to  Southey  and  his  church  is 
in  the  next  paragraph,  where,  after  the  avowal  that  "  the  last 
sect  with  which  vou  can  remember  me  to  have  made  coniinon 


390  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

profession  were  the  Unitarians,"  he  tells  how,  on  the  previous 
Easter  Sunday,  he  had  attended  the  service  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  and,  when  he  would  have  lingered  afterwards  among 
the  tombs  to  meditate,  was  "turned,  like  a  dog  or  some 
profane  person,  out  into  the  common  street,  with  feelings  which 
I  could  not  help,  but  not  very  congenial  to  tJie  day  or  the 
discourse.  I  do  not  know,"  lie  adds,  "  that  I  shall  ever  venture 
myself  again  into  one  of  your  churches." 

These  words  were  published  in  the  London  Maga::inc  in 
1825  ;  but  in  the  posthumous  collected  edition  of  the  Essays  of 
Elia  all  the  portions  above  cited  were  dropped,  and  the  para- 
graph last  quoted  from  was  modified,  leaving  out  the  last 
words.  The  essay  does  not  seem  to  ha\e  been  reprinted  in 
full  till  It  appeared  in  R.  H.  Shepherd's  edition  of  1878.  But 
the  original  issue  In  the  London  Magasine  created  a  tradition 
among  the  lovers  of  Lamb,  and  his  name  has  alwavs  been 
associated  with  some  repute  for  freethlnking.  There  is  further 
very  important  testimony  as  to  Lamb's  opinions  In  one  of 
Allsopp's  records  of  his  conversations  with  Coleridge  : — 

"  No,  no;  Lamb's  skepticism  has  not  come  lightly,  nor  is  he 
a  skeptic  \sic  ;  Query,  scoffer  ?\  The  harsh  reproof  to  Godwin 
for  his  conteniptuous  allusion  to  Christ  before  a  well-trained 
child  proves  that  he  is  not  a  skeptic  [?  scoffer].  His  mind, 
never  prone  to  analysis,  seems  to  have  been  disgusted  with  the 
hollow  pretences,  the  false  reasonings  and  absurdities  of  the 
rogues  and  fools  with  whom  all  establishments,  and  all  creeds 
seeking  to  become  established,  abound.  I  look  upon  Lamb  as 
one  hovering  between  earth  and  heaven  ;  neither  hoping  much 
nor  fearing  anything.  It  is  curious  that  he  should  retain  many 
usages  which  he  learnt  or  adopted  in  the  fervour  of  his  early 
religious  feelings,  now  that  his  faith  Is  In  a  state  of  suspended 
animation.  Believe  me,  who  know  him  well,  that  Lamb,  say 
what  he  will,  has  more  of  the  essentials  oi  Christianity  than 
ninety-nine  out  of  a  Iiundred  professing  Christians.  He  has  all 
that  would  still  have  been  Christian  had  Christ  never  lived  or 
been  made  manifest  upon  earth."  (Allsopp's  Letters,  Conversa- 
tions, and  Recollections  of  S.  T.  Coleridge,  3rd  ed.  1864,  p.  46.) 
In  connection  with  the  frequently  cited  but  doubtful  anecdote  as 
to  Lamb's  religious  feeling  ghen  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Auto- 
biography (rep.  p.  253),  may  be  noted  the  following,  given  by 
Allsopp  :  "  After  a  visit  to  Coleridge,  during  which  the  conver- 
sation had  taken  a  religious  turn,  Leigh  Hunt expressed  his 

surprise  that  such  a  man  as  Coleridge  should,  when  speaking 
of  Christ,  always  call  him  Our  Saviour.  Lamb,  who  had  been 
exhilarated  by  one  glass  of  that  gooseberry  or  raisin  cordial 
which  he  has  so  often  anathematised,  stammered  out,  '  Ne-ne- 
never  mind  what  Coleridge  savs  ;  he  is  full  of  fun.'  " 


POETR  Y  A  ND  FINE  LETTERS  39 1 

7.  To  belles  lettres  belongs,   broadly  speaking,   that 
part  of  the  work  of  Carlyle  which,  despite  his  anxious 
caution,  conveyed  to  susceptible  readers  a  non-Christian 
view  of  things.     We  know  from  a  posthumous  writing 
of  Mr.  Froude's  that,  when  that  writer  had  gone  through 
the  university  and  taken  holy  orders  without  ever  having 
had  a   single   doubt   as  to   his   creed,    Carlyle's    books 
"taught  him  that  the  religion   in   which  he    had    been 
reared  was  but  one  of  many  dresses  in  which  spiritual 
truth    had   arrayed    itself,  and    that   the   creed  was    not 
literallv  true  so  far  as  it  was  a  narrative  of  facts."'     It 
was  presumably  from  the  Sartor  Rcsartiis  and  some  of 
the   Essays,   such   as    that   on    Voltaire — perhaps,  also, 
neofativelv  from  the  g-eneral  absence  of  Christian  senti- 
ment  in  Carlyle's  works — that  such  lessons  were  learned; 
and   though  it  is  certain  that  many  non-zealous  Chris- 
tians saw  no  harm  in  Carlyle,  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  for  multitudes  of  readers  he  had  the  same  awaken- 
ing  virtue.     It    need    hardly    be    said    that   his    friend 
Emerson  exercised    it  in   no  less  degree.     Of  Ruskin, 
again,  the  same  may  be  asserted  in  respect  of  his  many 
searching  thrusts  at  clerical  and  lay  practice,  his  defence 
of  Colenso,  and  the  obvious  disappearance  from  his  later 
books  of  the  evangelical  orthodoxy  of  the  earlier. "^    Thus 
the  three  most  celebrated  writers  of  English  prose  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  century  were  in  a  measure  associated 
with  the  spirit  of  critical  thought  on  matters  religious. 
In    a    much   stronger  degree,    the  same   thing    may  be 
predicated    finally   of   the    writer   who    in    the    field    of 
English  belles  lettres,  apart  from  fiction,  came   nearest 
them  in  fame  and  influence.      Matthew  Arnold,  passing 
insensibly  from  the  English  attitude  of  academic  ortho- 
doxy to  that  of  the  humanist  for  whom  Christ  is  but  an 
admirable  teacher  and  God  a  "Something  not  ourselves 
which  makes  for  righteousness,"  became  for  the  England 
of  his  later  years  the  favourite  pilot  across  the  bar  between 
supernaturalism    and    naturalism.       Only    in    England, 

^  My  Relations  -with  Carlyle y  1903,  p.  2. 

'  Cp.  the  author's  J/o«'<?/-«  Htiiitanists,  pp.  189-194. 


392  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

perhaps,  could  his  curious  gospel  of  church-going  and 
Bible-reading  atheism  have  prospered,  but  there  it  pros- 
pered exceedingly.  Alike  as  poet  and  as  essayist,  even 
when  essaying  to  disparage  Colenso  or  to  confute  the 
Germans  where  they  jostled  his  predilection  for  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  he  was  a  disintegrator  of  tradition,  and, 
in  his  dogmatic  way,  a  dissolver  of  dogmatism.  When, 
therefore,  beside  the  four  names  just  mentioned  the 
British  public  placed  those  of  the  philosophers  Spencer, 
Lewes,  and  Mill,  and"  the  scientists  Darwin,  Huxley, 
Clifford,  and  Tyndall,  they  could  not  but  recognise  that 
the  mind  of  the  age  was  divorced  from  the  nominal  faith 
of  the  church. 

8.  In  English  fiction,  the  beginning  of  the  end  of 
genuine  faith  was  apparent  to  the  prophetic  eyes  of 
Wilberforce  and  Robert  Hall,  of  whom  the  former 
lamented  the  total  absence  of  Christian  sentiment  from 
nearly  all  the  successful  fiction  even  of  his  day  ;'  and 
the  latter  avowed  the  pain  with  which  he  noted  that  Miss 
Edgeworth,  whom  he  admired  for  her  style  and  art,  put 
absolutely  no  religion  in  her  books,-  while  Hannah  More, 
whose  principles  were  so  excellent,  had  such  a  vicious 
style.  With  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  indeed,  serious 
fiction  might  seem  to  be  on  the  side  of  faith,  both  being 
liberally  orthodox,  though  neither  ventured  on  religious 
romance  ;  but  with  George  Eliot  the  balance  began 
to  lean  the  other  way,  her  sympathetic  treatment  of 
religious  types  counting  for  little  as  against  her  known 
rationalism.  At  the  end  of  the  century,  almost  all  of 
the  leading  writers  of  the  higher  fiction  were  known  to 
be  either  rationalists  or  simple  theists  ;  and  against  the 
heavy  metal  of  Mr.  Meredith,  Mr.  Conrad,  Mr.  Hardy, 

'  Practical  View  of  the  Prevailing  Religions  System  (1797),  Sth  ed. 
p.  368.  Wilberforce  points  with  chagrin  to  the  superiority  of  Moham- 
medan writers  in  these  matters. 

^  "  In  point  of  tendency  I  should  class  her  books  among-  the  most 
irreligious  I  ever  read,"  delineating  good  characters  in  every  aspect, 
"  and  all  this  without  the  remotest  allusion  to  Christianity,  the  only  true 
religion."  Cited  in  O.  Gn^^ovy's  Brief  Aleinoiruf  Robert  Hall,  1833,  p.  242. 
The  context  tells  how  Miss  Edgeworth  avowed  that  she  had  not  thought 
religion  necessary  in  books  meant  for  the  upper  classes. 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  393 

Mr.  Moore  (whose  sympathetic  handling'  of  religious 
motiv^es  suggests  the  influence  of  Huysmans),  and  the 
didactic-deistic  Mrs.  Humphry- Ward,  orthodoxy  can 
but  claim  artists  of  the  third  or  lower  grades.  The 
championship  of  some  of  the  latter  may  be  regarded  as 
the  last  humiliation  of  faith. 

In  1905  there  was  current  a  vulii;'ar  novel  entitled  When  it 
was  Dark,  wherein  was  said  to  be  drawn  a  blood-curdling- 
picture  of  what  would  happen  in  the  event  of  a  general  surrender 
of  Christian  faith.  Despite  some  episcopal  approbation,  the 
book  excited  much  disgust  among  the  more  enlightened  clergy. 
The  preface  to  Miss  Marie  Corelli's  Mighty  Atom  may  serve  to 
convey  to  the  many  readers  who  cannot  peruse  the  works  of 
that  lady  an  idea  of  the  temper  in  which  she  vindicates  her 
faith.  Another  popular  novelist  of  a  low  artistic  grade,  the 
late  Mr.  Seton-Merriman,  has  avowed  his  religious  soundness 
in  a  romance  with  a  Russian  plot,  entitled  The  Stnvers.  Refer- 
ring to  the  impressions  produced  by  great  scenes  of  Nature,  he 
writes:  "These  places  and  these  times  are  good  for  conva- 
lescent atheists  and  such  as  pose  as  unbelievers — the  cheapest 
form  of  notoriety"  (p.  168).  The  novelist's  own  Christian  ethic 
is   thus  indicated  :   "He  had  Jewish  blood  in  his  veins,  which 

carried   with  it  the  usual  tendency  to  cringe.      It   is  in  the 

blood  ;  it  is  part  of  that  which  the  people  who  stood  without 
Pilate's  palace  took  upon  themselves  and  their  children"  (p.  59). 
But  the  enormous  mass  of  modern  novels  includes  some  toler- 
able pleas  for  faith,  as  well  as  many  manifestoes  of  agnosticism, 
OwQ.  of  the  works  of  the  late  "Edna  Lyall,"  We  Two,  was 
notable  as  the  expression  of  the  sympathy  of  a  devout,  generous, 
and  amiable  Christian  lady  with  the  personality  and  career  of 
Mr.  Bradlaugh. 

9.  Among  the  most  artistically  gifted  of  the  English 
story-writers  and  essayists  of  the  last  generation  of  the 
century  was  Richard  Jefferies  (d.  1887),  who  in  The 
Story  of  My  Heart  (1883)  has  told  how  "  the  last  traces 
and  relics  of  superstitions  acquired  compulsorily  in 
childhood  "  finally  passed  away  from  his  mind,  leaving 
him  a  Naturalist  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  In  the 
Eulogy  of  Richard  Jefferies  published  by  Sir  Walter 
Besant  in  1888  it  is  asserted  that  on  his  deathbed 
Jefteries  returned  to  his  faith,  and  "died  listening  with 
faith  and  love  to  the  words  contained  in  the  Old  Book." 


394  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

A  popular  account  of  this  "conversion"  accordingly 
became  current,  and  was  employed  to  the  usual  purpose. 
As  has  been  shown  by  a  careful  student,  and  as  was 
admitted  on  inquiry  by  Sir  Walter  Besant,  there  had 
been  no  conversion  whatever,  Jefferies  having  simply 
listened  to  his  wife's  reading  without  hinting  at  any 
change  in  his  convictions.'  Despite  his  biographer's 
express  admission  of  his  error.  Christian  journals,  such 
as  the  Spectator,  have  burked  the  facts  ;  one,  the 
Christian,  has  piously  charged  dishonesty  on  the  writer 
who  brought  them  to  light  ;  and  a  third,  the  Salvationist 
War  Cry,  has  pronounced  his  action  "  the  basest  form  of 
chicanery  and  falsehood."^  The  episode  is  worth  noting 
as  indicating  the  qualities  which  still  attach  to  orthodox 
propaganda. 

lo.  Of  the  imaginative  literature  of  the  United  States, 
as  of  that  of  England,  the  same  generalisation  broadly 
holds  good.  The  incomparable  Hawthorne,  whatever 
his  psychological  sympathy  with  the  Puritan  past, 
wrought  inevitably  by  his  art  for  the  loosening  of  its 
intellectual  hold  ;  Poe,  though  he  did  not  venture  till 
his  days  of  downfall  to  write  his  Eureka,  thereby  proves 
himself  an  entirely  non-Christian  theist;  and  Emerson's 
poetry,  no  less  than  his  prose,  constantly  expresses  his 
pantheism  ;  while  his  gifted  disciple  Thoreau,  in  some 
ways  a  more  stringent  thinker  than  his  master,  was 
either  a  pantheist  or  a  Lucretian  theist,  standing  aloof 
from  all  churches.^  The  economic  conditions  of  American 
life  have  till  recently  been  unfavourable  to  the  higher 
literature,  as  apart  from  fiction  ;  but  the  unique  figure 
of  Walt  WhitxMAN  stands  for  a  thoroughly  naturalistic 
view  of  life  ;^  Mr.  Howells  appears  to   be  at   most  a 


'  Art.  '-The  Faith  of  Richard  Jefferies,"  by  H.  S.  Salt,  in  Westminster 
Reviav,  Auyust,  1905,  rep.  as  pamphlet  by  the  R.  P.  A.,  igo6. 

^  The  writer  of  these  scurrilities  is  Mr.  Bramwell  Booth,  War-  Cry, 
May  27th,  1905. 

3  See  Talks  7vifh  Emerson,  by  C.  J.  Woodbury,  1890,  pp.  93-94. 

^  It  was  in  his  old  agfe  that  Whitman  tended  most  to  "  theise  "  Nature. 
In  conversation  with  Dr.  Moncure  Conway,  he  once  used  the  expres- 
sion that  "the  spectacle  of  a  mouse  is  enough  to  stagger  a  sextillion  of 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  395 

theist ;  Mr.  Henry  James  has  not  even  exhibited  the 
bias  of  his  gifted  brother  to  the  theism  of  their  no  less 
gifted  father  ;  and  some  of  the  most  esteemed  men  of 
letters  since  the  Civil  War,  as  Dr.  Wendell  Holmes 
and  Colonel  Wentworth  Higginson,  have  been 
avowedly  on  the  side  of  rationalism,  or,  as  the  term 
goes  in  the  States,  "liberalism."  Though  the  tone  of 
ordinary  conversation  is  more  often  reminiscent  of 
religion  in  the  United  States  than  in  England,  the 
novel  and  the  newspaper  have  been  perhaps  more 
thoroughly  secularised  there  than  here ;  and  in  the 
public  honour  lately  done  to  so  thorough  a  rationalist 
as  Dr.  Moncure  Conwav  at  the  hands  of  his  alma  mater. 
the  Dickinson  College,  West  Virginia,  may  be  seen  the 
proof  that  the  official  orthodoxy  of  his  youth  has  disap- 
peared from  the  region  of  his  birth. 

II.  Of  the  vast  modern  output  of  belles  lettres  in 
continental  Europe,  finally,  a  similar  account  is  to  be 
given.  The  supreme  poet  of  modern  Italy,  Leopardi, 
is  one  of  the  most  definitely  rationalistic  as  well  as  one 
of  the  greatest  philosophic  poets  in  literature  ;  and 
despite  all  the  claims  of  the  Catholic  socialists,  there  is 
no  modern  Catholic  literature  in  Italy  of  any  European 
value.  In  Germany  we  have  seen  Goethe  and  Schiller 
distinctly  counting  for  naturalism  ;  and  the  line  is  found 
to  be  continued  in  Heinrich  von  Kleist,  the  unhappy 
but  masterly  dramatist  of  Der  Zerbrochene  Krug,  one  of 
the  truest  geniuses  of  his  time  ;  and  above  all  in  Heine, 
w^hose  characteristic  profession  of  reconciling  himself  on 
his  deathbed  with  the  deity  he  imaged  as  "  the  Aristo- 
phanes of  heaven"'  serves  so  scantily  to  console  the 
orthodox  lovers  of  his  matchless  song.  His  criticism  of 
Kant  and  Fichte  is  a  sufficient  clue  to  his  serious  con- 
victions ;    and  that  "God  is  all   that  there  is  """   is  the 

infidels."  Dr.  Conway  replied  :  "  And  the  sig^ht  of  the  cat  playing-  with 
the  mouse  is  enoug-h  to  set  them  on  their  feet  again  ";  whereat  Whitman 
tolerantly  smiled. 

'  Gestdndnisse,  end  {Werke,  ed.  1876,  iv,  59). 

-  Zi(r  Gcsch.  der  Relig.  nnd  Philos.,  in   Werke,  ed.  cited,  iii,  80. 


396  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  igth  CENTURY 

sufficient  expression  of  his  pantheism.  The  whole 
purport  of  his  brilHant  sketch  of  the  History  of  Religmi 
and  Philosophy  in  Germany  (1834;  2nd  ed.  1852)  is  a 
propaganda  of  the  very  spirit  of  freethinking,  which 
now  constitutes  for  Germany  at  once  a  literary  classic 
and  a  manifesto  of  rationalism — certainly  not  to  be 
taken  as  scientific  history,  but  often,  for  the  later  period, 
perfectly  just.  As  he  himself  said  of  the  return  of  the 
aged  Schelling  to  Catholicism,  we  may  say  of  Heine 
that  a  deathbed  reversion  to  early  beliefs  is  a  patho- 
logical phenomenon,  and  the  reverseof  a  good  argument 
for  the  belief  so  recovered. 

The  use  latterly  made  of  Heine's  deathbed  re-conversion  by 
orthodoxy  in  England  is  characteristic.  The  late  letters  and 
conversations  in  which  he  said  edifying-  things  of  God  and  the 
Bible  are  cited  for  readers  who  know  nothing  of  the  context, 
and  almost  as  little  of  the  speaker.  He  had  similarly  praised 
the  Bible  in  1830  (Letter  of  July,  in  B.  iii  of  his  volume  on 
Borne — IVerke,  vii,  160).  To  the  reader  of  the  whole  it  is  clear 
that,  while  Heine's  verbal  renunciation  of  his  former  pantheism, 
and  his  characterisation  of  tlie  pantheistic  position  as  a  "timid 
atheism,"  might  have  been  made  independently  of  his  physical 
prostration,  his  profession  of  the  theism  at  which  he  had 
formerly  scoffed  is  only  momentarily  serious,  even  at  a  time 
when  such  a  reversion  would  have  been  in  no  wav  surprising'. 
His  return  to  and  praise  of  the  Bible,  the  book  of  his  childhood, 
during  years  of  extreme  suffering  and  utter  helplessness,  was 
in  the  ordinary  way  of  physiological  reaction.  But  inasmuch 
as  his  thinking  faculty  was  never  exting-uished  bv  his  tortures, 
he  chronically  indicated  that  his  religious  talk  was  a  half- 
conscious  indulgence  of  the  o\erstrained  emotional  nature,  and 
substantially  an  exercise  of  his  poetic  feeling — always  as  large 
a  part  of  his  psychosis  as  his  reasoning  facult}'.  Even  in  death- 
bed profession  he  was  neither  a  Jew  nor  a  Christian,  his 
language  being  that  of  a  deism  "scarcely  distinguishable  in 
any  essential  element  from  that  of  Voltaire  or  Diderot" 
(Strodtmann,  Heine's  Lehen  iind  IVerke,  2te  Aufl.  ii,  386). 
"  My  religious  convictions  and  views,"  he  writes  in  the  preface 

to  the  late  Romancero,  "remain  free  of  all  churchism I  have 

abjured  nothing,  not  even  my  old  heathen  Gods,  from  whom  I 
have  parted  in  love  and  friendship."  In  his  will  he  peremptorily 
forbade  any  clerical  procedure  at  his  funeral  ;  and  his  feeling 
on  that  side  is  revealed  in  his  sad  jests  to  his  friend  Meissner  in 
1850.      "If  I   could  only  go   out  on   crutches!"   he  exclaimed; 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS  397 

adding:  "Do  you  know  where  I  should  go?  Straight  to 
church."  0\\  his  friends  expressing  disbelief,  he  went  on  : 
"Certainly,  to  church!  Where  should  a  man  go  on 
crutches?  Naturally,  if  I  could  walk  without  crutches,  I 
should  ^o  to  the  laughing  boulevards  or  the  Jardin  Mabille." 
The  story  is  told  in  England  without  the  conclusion,  as  a  piece 
of  "  Christian  Evidence." 

But  even  as  to  his  theism  Heine  was  never  more  than 
wilfully  and  poetically  a  believer.  In  184c)  we  find  him  jesting 
about  "God  "  and  "  the  Gods,"  declaring  he  will  not  offend  the 
lieber  Gott,  whose  vultures  he  knows  and  respects.  "Opium 
is  also  a  religion,"  he  writes   in  1850.      "  Christianity  is  useless 

for  the  healthy for  the  sick  it  is  a  very  good  religion."     "If 

the  German  people  in  their  need  accept  the  King  of  Prussia, 
why  should  not  I  accept  the  personal  God  ?  "  And  in  speaking 
of  the  postscript  to  the  Romancero  he  writes  in  1851  :  "Alas,  I 
had  neither  time  nor  mood  to  say  there  what  I  wanted — namely, 
that  I  die  as  a  Poet,  who  needs  neither  religion  nor  philosophy, 
and  has  nothing  to  do  with  either.  The  Poet  understands  very 
well  the  symbolic  idiom  of  Religion,  and  the  abstract  jargon  of 
Philosophy,  but  neither  the  religious  gentry  nor  those  of  philo- 
sophy will  ever  understand  the  Poet."  A  few  weeks  before  his 
death  he  signs  a  New  Year  letter,  "  Nebuchadnezzar  II, 
formerly  Prussian  Atheist,  now  Lotosflower-adorer."  At  this 
time  he  was  taking  immense  doses  of  morphia  to  make  his 
tortures  bearable.  A  few  hours  before  his  death  a  querving 
pietist  got  from  him  the  answer:  "God  will  pardon  me  ;  it  is 
his  business."  The  Gestdndnisse,  written  in  1854,  ends  in 
absolute  irony  ;  and  his  alleged  grounds  for  giving  up  atheism, 
sometimes  quoted  seriously,  are  purely  humorous  ( IW^i-ke,  iv,  33). 
If  it  be  in  an}'^  sense  true,  as  he  tells  in  the  preface  to  the 
Romancero,  that  "  the  high  clerisy  of  atheism  pronounced  its 
anathema "  over  him — that  is  to  say,  that  former  friends 
denounced  him  as  a  w-eak  turncoat — it  needed  only  the  publi- 
cation of  his  Life  and  Letters  to  enable  freethinkers  to  take  an 
entirely  sympathetic  view  of  his  case,  which  may  serve  as  a 
supreme  example  o{  "  the  martyrdom  of  man."  On  the  whole 
question  see  Strodtmann,  as  cited,  ii,  372  sq.,  and  the  Gesfiind- 
nisse,  which  should  be  compared  with  the  earlier  written 
fragments  of  Briefe  ilber  Deutschland  {Werke,  iii,  no),  where 
there  are  some  significant  variations  in  statements  of  fact. 

Since  Heine,  German  belles  lettres  has  hardly  been  a 
first-rate  influence  in  Europe  ;  but  some  of  the  leading 
novelists,  as  Auerbach  and  Heyse,  are  well  known  to 
have  shared  in  the  rational  philosophy  of  their  age  ;  and 


398  FREETHOUGHT  IN  THE  njth  CENTURY 


the  Christianity  of  Wagner,  whose  precarious  support 
to  the  cause  of  faith  has  been  welcomed  chiefly  by  its 
heteroclite  adherents,  counts  for  nothing  in  the  critical 
scale.' 

12.  But  perhaps  the  most  considerable  evidence,  in 
belles  lettres,  of  the  predominance  of  rationalism  in 
modern  Europe  is  to  be  found  in  the  literary  history  of  the 
Scandinavian  States  and  Russia.  The  Russian  develop- 
ment indeed  had  gone  far  ere  the  modern  Scandinavian 
literatures  had  well  begun.  Already  in  the  first  quarter 
of  the  century  the  poet  Poushkine  was  an  avowed  heretic  ; 
and  Gogol  even  let  his  art  suffer  from  his  preoccupations 
with  the  new  humanitarian  ideas  ;  while  the  critic 
BiELiNSKY,  classed  by  Tourguenief  as  the  Lessing  of 
Russia,-  was  pronouncedly  rationalistic, ^  as  was  his 
contemporary  the  critic  Granovsky,'^  reputed  the  finest 
Russian  stylist  of  his  day.  At  this  period  belles  lettres 
stood  for  every  form  of  intellectual  influence  in  Russia, ^ 
and  all  educated  thought  was  moulded  by  it.  The  most 
perfect  artistic  result  is  the  fiction  of  the  freethinker 
Tourguenief, *"  the  Sophocles  of  the  modern  novel. 
His  two  great  contemporaries,  Dostoyevsky  and 
Tolstoy,  count  indeed  for  supernaturalism  ;  but  the 
truly  wonderful  genius  of  the  former  is  something  apart 
from  his  philosophy,  which  is  merely  childlike  ;  and  the 
latter,  the  least  masterly  if  the  most  strenuous  artist  of 
the  three,  makes  his  religious  converts  in  Russia  chiefly 
among  the  uneducated,  and  is  in  any  case  sharply 
antagonistic  to  orthodox  Christianitv.  It  does  not 
appear  that  the  younger  writer,  Potapenko,  a  fine 
artist,   is   orthodox,  despite    his    extremely  sympathetic 


'  See  Ernest  Newman's  Study  of  Wagner,  1899,  p.  390,  note,  as  to  the 
vagueness  of  Wag'nerians  on  the  subject. 

^  Tikhomirov,  La  Ritssie,  2e  edit.  p.  343. 

3  See  Comte  de  Vogue's  Le  roman  russe,  p.  218,  as  to  his  propaganda 
of  atheism. 

*  Arnaudo,  Le  Nihilisine  ef  les  Nihilistes,  French  trans,  p.  50. 

5  Tikhomirov,  p.  344. 

"  ''  II  [Tourguenief]  t^tait  Hbre-penseur,  at  d<5test4t  I'apparat  religieux 
d'une  maniire  toute  particuli^re."  I.  Pavlovsky,  Souvenirs  sur  Tour- 
guenief, 1887,  p.  242. 


POETRY  AND  FINE  LETTERS 


399 


presentment  of  a  superior  priest ;  and  the  still  younger 
Gorky  is  an  absolute  Naturalist. 

In  the  Scandinavian  States,  again,  there  are  hardly 
any  exceptions  to  the  freethinking  tendency  among  the 
leading  living  men  of  letters.  In  the  person  of  the 
abnormal  religionist  Soren  Kierkegaard  (1813-1855)  a 
new  force  of  criticism  began  to  stir  in  Denmark.  Setting 
out  as  a  theologian,  Kierkegaard  gradually  developed, 
always  on  quasi-religious  lines,  into  a  vehement 
assailant  of  conventional  Christianity,  somewhat  in  the 
spirit  of  Pascal,  somewhat  in  that  of  Feuerbach,  again 
in  that  of  Ruskin  ;  and  in  a  temper  recalling  now  a 
Berserker  and  now  a  Hebrew  prophet.  The  general 
effect  of  his  teaching  may  be  gathered  from  the  mass  of 
the  work  of  Henrik  Ibsen,  who  was  his  disciple,  and 
in  particular  from  Ibsen's  Brand,  of  which  the  hero  is 
partly  modelled  on  Kierkegaard.'  Ibsen,  though  his 
Brand  was  counted  to  him  for  righteousness  by  the 
churches,  has  shown  himself  a  profound  naturalist  in 
all  his  later  work  ;  Bjornson  is  an  active  freethinker; 
the  eminent  Danish  critic,  Georg  Brandes,  early 
avowed  himself  to  the  same  effect ;  and  his  brother,  the 
dramatist,  Edward  Brandes,  was  elected  to  the  Danish 
Parliament  in  1881  despite  his  declaration  that  he 
believed  in  neither  the  Christian  nor  the  Jewish  God. 
Most  of  the  younger  litterateurs  of  Norway  and  Sweden 
seem  to  be  of  the  same  cast  of  thoug-ht. 


'  See  the  article  "  Un  Pr&urseur  d'Henrik  Ibsen,  Soeren  Kierkegaard," 
in  the  Revue  de  Paris,  July  ist,  1901. 


Chapter  XIX. 

THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

If  it  be  a  sound  general  principle  that  freethought  is 
a  natural  variation  which  prospers  according  to  the 
environment,  it  will  follow  that  where,  culture-oppor- 
tunities being  roughly  equal,  there  are  differences  in  the 
amount  of  ostensible  freethinking,  the  explanation  lies 
in  some  of  the  social  conditions.  We  have  seen 
rationalism,  in  the  sense  of  a  free  play  of  critical  reason 
on  traditional  creeds,  flourish  variously  in  various  ages 
and  civilisations  according  to  its  opportunities  ;  till  in 
our  own  day,  with  a  maximum  of  political  freedom,  a 
minimum  of  priestly  power,  a  maximum  of  popular 
culture,  and  a  maximum  development  of  science  and 
special  research,  there  has  occurred  by  far  the  greatest 
diffusion  and  the  most  thorough  cultivation  of  anti- 
supernaturalist  ideas.  Yet  in  some  of  the  most 
civilised  countries  countenance  is  given  by  the  greater 
part  of  the  newspaper  press,  and  by  the  machinery  of 
government  in  general,  to  the  assumption  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Christian  churches  is  still  in  full 
possession  of  the  educated  intelligence,  and  that 
"unbelief"  is  a  noxious  weed.  This  phenomenon  is  to 
be  explained  like  any  other,  after  a  comparison  of  the 
conditions. 

I  I.  Britain  and  the   United  States. 

In  this  country  we  have  noted  the  natural  collusion  of 
the  clerical  and  propertied  classes  to  put  down  free- 
thought,  as  a  dangerously  democratic  force,  after  the 
French  Revolution.  Between  the  positive  persecution 
of  the  popular  forms  and  the  social  ostracism  of  the 
others,  it  had  come  about  that  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
century  few  writers  ventured   to  avow  even  a  guarded 

400 


BRITAIX  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  401 

hostility  to  the  current  creed.'     Such  proceedings  as  the 
persecution  of  the  writers  and   publishers  of  heterodox 
books,  and  the  refusal  of  copyright  to  their  authors,  had 
a    very   practical    influence.      Only   after   the    death    of 
Romilly  was  it  tacitly  avowed,  by  the  publication  of  a 
deistic  prayer  found  among  his  papers,  that  he  had  had 
no    belief    in    revelation."     Eminent   authors    who    are 
known  to  have  rejected   the  Christian  creed,  as  Carlyle 
and  John   Mill,  avoided   any  open  breach,  and  received 
much     orthodox    approbation.     Privately    they    would 
speak  of  the   need  for  speaking  out,  without  speaking 
out  ;'  and  Carlyle  was  so  far  false  to  his  own  doctrine  of 
veracity  as  even  to  disparage  all  who  did.*     Mill,  it  is 
true,  spoke  out  to  some  extent  in  his  latter  years,  as  in 
his  address  to  the  St.  Andrews  students  (1867),  when, 
"in   the   reception  given  to  the  Address,  he  was   most 
struck  by  the  vociferous  applause  of  the  divinity  students 
at  the  freethought  passage.     He  was  privately  thanked 
by  others  among  the  hearers  for  this  part.''^     But  as  the 
pressure  of  freethought  is  always  increasing,  the  total 
timidity   seems    to    remain    much  the    same,   the    latest 
heresy   being   shunned    in    its  day  as  was    the  earlier, 
which  now  ranks  as  orthodoxy.     And  in  the  first  half 
of   the  century  displays   of  courage  were  rare    indeed. 
Mr.     Froude    was    remarkable    for     his    surrender    of 
the     clerical    profession    after     taking    orders,    in    the 
teeth    of    a    bitter    opposition     from    his    family,    and 
further  for  his   publication  of  a  freethinking  romance, 
The  Nemesis   of  Faith    (1849)  ;    but    he    did   not   con- 
tinue an    "  aggressive "  course,  and    went   far   to   con- 
ciliate   Anglican     orthodoxy    by    his    History.      Thus 
the  air  of  fixity  was    in   large  part  maintained   by  the 

'  See  The  Dynamics  of  Religion,  pp.  193-233,  as  to  the  prevailing-  tone 
among  publicists. 

-  See  Brougham's  letters  in  the  Correspondence  of  Macvey  Napier, 
1879,  pp.  333-7.  Brougham  is  deeply  indignant,  not  at  the  fact,  but  at 
the  indiscreet  revelation  of  it — as  also  at  the  similar  revelation  con- 
cerning Pitt  (p.  334). 

3  See  Professor  Bain'sy.  5.  Mill,  pp.  157,  191. 

■*  Cp.  Yroude's  Lotidon  Life  of  Carlyle,  i,  458. 

5  Bain,/.  5.  Mill,  p.  128. 

VOL.   II.  2D 


402  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


educated  class,  while  it  was  well  known  privately  that 
educated  doubters  abounded.  On  the  one  hand  the 
bigots  held  the  language  of  fanaticism,  and  on  the  other 
hand  the  less  bigoted  blustered  against  the  braver  gain- 
sayers.  A  professed  man  of  science  could  write  in  1838 
that  "  the  new  mode  of  interpreting  the  Scriptures  which 
has  sprung  up  in  Germany  is  the  darkest  cloud  which 

lowers    upon    the    horizon    of     that    country The 

Germans  have  been  conducted  by  some  of  their  teachers 
to  the  borders  of  a  precipice,  one   leap  from  which  will 
plunge  them  into  deism."  He  added  that  in  various  parts 
of  Europe  "  the  heaviest  calamity  impending  over  the 
whole  fabric  of  society  in  our  time   is  the  lengthening 
stride  of  bold  skepticism   in  some  parts,  and  the  more 
stealthy     onwards-creeping    step    of    critical    cavil    in 
others.'"     Such   declamation  could   terrorise  the    timid 
and   constrain  the   prudent  in   such  a  society  as  that  of 
early  Victorian  England.     The  prevailing  note  is  struck 
in    Macaulay's  description  of  Charles    Blount    as   "an 
infidel,  and   the  head  of  a  small  school  of  infidels  who 
were  troubled  with  a  morbid  desire  to  make  converts."^ 
All  the  while,  Macaulay  was  himself  privately  "infidel ";3 
but  he  cleared   his  conscience  by  thus  denouncing  those 
who  had  the  courage  of  their  opinions.      In  this  simple 
fashion  some  of  the  sanest  writers  in  history  were  com- 
placently put  below  the  level  of  the  commonplace  dis- 
semblers who  aspersed  them  ;  and  the  average  educated 
man  saw  no  baseness  in  the  procedure.     It  was  assumed 
that    a    sanhedrim    of    shufflers    could    make    courage 
ridiculous    by  calling    themselves  "the  wise";    and   it 

'  Germany,  by  Bisset  Hawkins,  M.D.,  F.R.S.,  F.R.C.P.,  Inspector  of 
Prisons,  late  Professor  at  King-'s  College,  etc.,  1838,  p  171. 

^  History,  ch.  xix.     Student's  ed.  ii,  411. 

3  Sometimes  he  gives  a  clue  ;  and  we  find  Broug-ham  privately 
denouncing-  him  for  his  remark  (Essay  on  Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes, 
6th  par.)  that  to  try  "without  the  help  of  revelation  to  prove  the  immor- 
,  tality  of  man,"  is  vain.  "It  is  next  thing-  to  preaching  atheism,''  shouts 
Brougham  (Letter  of  October  20th,  1S40,  in  Correspondence  of  Macvey 
Napier,  p.  333),  who  at  the  same  time  hotly  insisted  that  Cuvier  had 
made  an  advance  in  Natural  Theology  by  proving  that  there  must  have 
been  one  divine  interposition  after  the  creation  of  the  world — to  create 
species.     {Id.  p.  337.) 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  403 

became  current  doctrine  that  "  the  wise  man  "  conceals 
his  opinions  when  they  are  unpopular. 

The  opinion  deliberately  expressed  in  this  connection  by  the 
late  Professor  Bain  is  worth  noting  : — 

"  It  can  at  least  be  clearly  seen  what  was  the  motive  of 
Carlyle's  perplexing  style  of  composition.  We  now  know  what 
his  opinions  were  when  he  began  to  write,  and  that  to  express 
them  would  have  been  fatal  to  his  success  ;  yet  he  was  not  a 
man  to  indulge  in  rank  hypocrisy.  He  accordinglj-  adopted  a 
studied  and  ambiguous  phraseology,  which  for  long  imposed 
upon  the  religious  public,  who  put  their  own  interpretation 
upon  his  mystical  utterances,  and  gave  him  the  benefit  of  any 
doubt.  In  the  Life  of  Sterling  he  threw  off  the  mask,  but  still 
was  not  taken  at  his  word.  Had  there  been  a  perfect  tolerance 
of  all  opinions,  he  would  have  begun  as  he  ended  ;  and  his 
strain  of  composition,  while  still  mystical  and  high-flown, 
would  never  have  been  Identified  with  our  national  orthodoxy. 

"  I  have  grave  doubts  as  to  whether  we  possess  Macaulay's 
real  opinions  on  religion.  His  way  of  dealing  with  the  subject 
is  so  like  the  hedging  of  an  unbeliever  that,  without  some  good 
assurance  to  the  contrary,  I  must  include  him  also  among  the 
imitators  of  Aristotle's  'caution.'  Some  future  critic  will 
devote  himself,  like  Professor  Mohl,  to  expounding  his 
ambiguous  utterances. 

"When  Sir  Charles  Lyell  brought  out  his  Antiquity  of  Man, 
he  too  was  cautious.  Knowing  the  dangers  of  his  footing,  he 
abstained  from  giving  an  estimate  of  the  extension  of  time 
required  by  the  evidences  of  human  remains.  Society  in 
London,  however,  would  not  put  up  with  this  reticence,  and  he 
had  ro  disclose  at  dinner  parties  what  he  had  withheld  from  the 
public — namely,  that  in  his  opinion  the  duration  of  man  could 
not  be  less  than  fifty  thousand  years  "  (Pra6-/«V:rt/ ^'j'i-aj'j,  1884, 
PP-  274-5). 

In  this  way  honest  and  narrow-minded  believers  were 
trained  to  suppose  that  their  views  were  triumphant  over 
all  attacks,'  and  to  see  in  "infidelity"  a  disease  of  an  ill- 
informed  past ;  and  as  the  church  had  really  gained  in 
conventional  culture  as  well  as  in  wealth  and  prestige  in 
the  period  of  reaction,  the  power  of  mere  convention  to 
override  ideas  was  still    enormous.       Above  all,  social 

'   In  1830,  for  instance,  we  find  a  Scottish  episcopal  D. D.  writing:  that 
"  Infidelity  has  had  its  day  ;  it,  depend   upon   it,  will  never  be  revived — 

NO  MAN    OF    GENIUS  WILL    EVER  WRITE   ANOTHER  WORD  IN  ITS  SUPPORT." 

Morehead,  Dialogues  on  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion,  p.  266. 


404  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

and  religious  prejudices  were  aided  by  the  vast  leverage 
of  economic  interest  throughout  a  thoroughly  commer- 
cialised community.  This  holds  good  alongside  of  a 
clear  balance  of  literary  power  on  the  side  of  unbelief. 
The  commercial  historv  of  England  and  America 
throughout  the  century  has  been  broadly  one  of  ever- 
increasing  competition  in  all  classes  ;  and  to  avow  an 
"unpopular"  view  is  in  general  to  stand  at  a  serious 
disadvantage  in  business  and  professional  life.  Even  of 
the  known  rationalists  among  the  serious  writers  of  the 
latter  half  of  the  century,  many  have  perforce  confined 
themselves  to  pure  science  or  scholarly  research  ;  and 
others  have  either  held  safe  official  posts  or  enjoyed 
private  means. 

In  one  or  other  of  these  classes  stand  such  names 
as  those  of  Grote,  the  two  Mills,  Professors  Bain, 
Huxley,  Tyndall,  and  Clifford,  Darwin,  Arnold, 
F.  W.  Newman,  Lewes,  and  in  a  measure  Spencer, 
who,  however,  long  felt  the  pinch  of  unpopularity  severely 
enough.  Detached  men  of  letters  like  Mr.  Morley  and 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  while  taking  up  freethinking  posi- 
tions, have  perhaps  not  been  uninfluenced  by  the  hostile 
environment.  In  any  case  it  is  perfectly  well  known  to 
all  freethinkers  that  there  are  many  of  their  way  of 
thinking  on  all  hands  who  dare  not  publicly  declare 
themselves.  And  whereas  religious  sects,  if  at  all 
numerous,  can  in  large  measure  indemnify  themselves 
against  others  by  holding  together,  rationalists  are 
under  the  difficulty  that  their  special  opinions  do  not 
call  for  institution-making  save  of  the  most  disinterested 
kind.  Every  religionist  is  under  some  religious  com- 
pulsion from  his  own  creed  to  worship ;  and  every 
priest  preaches  for  the  institutions  by  which  he  lives. 
We  have  seen  how  impossible  it  is  to  set  up  freethink- 
ing institutions  in  a  primitive  society.  The  difficulty  is 
still  great,  though  different,  in  a  commercial  community, 
where  even  among  freethinkers  the  disinterested  concern 
for  the  diffusion  of  truth  is  constantly  dulled  by  the 
social    struggle    for    existence  ;    while,    moreover,    the 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  405 


instructed  man's  dislike  of  sectarianism  is  a  further 
dissuasive  from  action  that  he  thinks  might  tend  to 
further  it.  And  as  regards  the  main  source  of  most 
rehgious  endowments,  bequest  by  will,  freethought  is 
in  this  country  absolutely  interdicted  from  any  save 
circuitous  provision.  Not  till  the  present  President  of 
the  National  Secular  Society  discovered  that  bequests  to 
a  registered  company  escape  the  old  law  could  any  such 
provision  be  made.'  Various  bequests  for  specifically 
freethinking  purposes  have  been  quashed  under  the 
Blasphemy  Laws  ;  and  all  the  while  ingenuous  Chris- 
tians have  taunted  freethinkers  with  their  lack  of 
sectarian  institutions. 

Thus,  educated  reason  standing  aloof  or  inhibited, 
while  educated  self-interest  conspires  with  ignorance,  an 
enormous  revenue  is  annually  devoted  to  the  main- 
tenance of  beliefs  not  held  by  multitudes  of  the  clergy 
themselves  ;  and  the  propaganda  of  freethought,  down 
till  the  other  day,  has  rested  with  the  "  quixotic "  few. 
Nearly  every  freethinking  writer  is  still  advised  by 
prudent  friends  to  give  up  such  unprofitable  work  ;  and 
the  very  desire  to  wield  an  influence  for  good,  as  in 
politics,  makes  many  rationalists  conceal  the  opinions 
w^iich  they  know  would  restrict  their  audience.  Only 
great  orators,  as  Bradlaugh  and  Ingersoll,  can  make  a 
good  income  by  platform  propaganda  ;  and  Bradlaugh 
was  prematurely  worn  out  by  the  atrocious  burdens  laid 
upon  him  in  his  Parliamentary  struggle,  with  the  active 
connivance  of  many  Conservative  partisans  who  believed 
no  more  than  he. 

It  would  thus  appear  that  until  the  "social  problem" 
is  solved  in  some  fashion  which  shall  make  intellectual 
honesty  a  much  safer  thing  than  at  present,  the  profes- 
sion of  supernaturalism  and  the  vogue  of  real  supersti- 
tion among  the  mass  of  the  less  intelligent  of  all  classes 
are  likely  to  continue  in  many  communities  alongside  of 

'  The  amount  of  propag^anda  that  has  been  achieved  by  the 
Rationalist  Press  Association  in  the  few  years  of  its  existence  is  a  proof 
of  the  importance  of  the  economic  basis. 


4o6  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

the  fullest  scientific  disproof  of  the  beliefs  in  question. 
Any  creed  whatever  can  subsist  under  the  modern  system 
of  endowments.      Had  a  church  of  Isis  and  Osiris  by  any 
chance  survived  with  good  endowments  through  the  ages 
of  Christian  destruction  and  confiscation  of  other  systems, 
it  could  to-day  find  educated   priests  and  adherents  in 
such  a  society  as  ours.     The  general  faculty  for  consis- 
tent thought  is  at  best  not  great.     Scientific  rationalists, 
findine    excuses   for.  their   official    conformities    to    the 
current  creeds,  argue  privately  that  all   that   is  needed 
is  non-contentiously  to  put  true  doctrines  in  circulation 
— that  without  argument  they  must  needs  expel  the  false. 
All   modern  culture-history  proves  this  to  be  a  fallacy. 
Even  gifted  brains  can   harbour  childish  errors  on  the 
side  on  which  they  are  undeveloped.     We  need  not  go 
back  to  Faraday  to  find  scientific  men  clinging  to  the 
relig-ion  of  their  nurseries.     An  eminent  mathematician, 
entirely  unqualified  in  moral  fields,  pays  tribute  to  Paley ; 
and    the   average    churchgoer  straightway    claims    that 
"science"  is  with  him.     To  say  nothing  of  the  habitual 
employment  of  the  Bible  in  the  churches,  the  vogue  of 
such  a  book  as  the  late  Mr.  Henry  Drummond's  Natural 
Law  in  the  Spiritual  World  is  a  sufficient  proof  of  the 
general    capacity  for   digesting    the    grossest    inconsis- 
tencies in  science.      It  was  possible    for   multitudes    of 
people  to  suppose    that    Darwin,  buried  as   he  was   in 
Westminster  Abbey,  had  died  a  Christian,  until  it  was 
shown  by  his  letters  that  he  had  definitely  abandoned 
theism.     On  the  other  hand,  it  takes  a  rare  combination 
of  intellectual  power,  moral  courage,  and  official  freedom 
to  permit  of  such  a  directly  rationalistic  propaganda  as 
was  carried  on  by  the  late  Professor  Clifford,  or  even 
such  as  has  been  accomplished  by  President  Andrew 
White   in    America  under   the    comparatively   popular 
profession  of  deism.      It  was  only  in  his  leisured  latter 
years   that    Professor    Huxley    carried    on    a   general 
conflict  with  orthodoxy.      In   middle  age  he  frequently 
covered  himself  by  attacks  on   professed   freethinkers  ; 
and   he    did    more  than  any  other  man   of   his  time  to 


BRITAIN  AXD  THE  UNITED  STATES  407 

conserve  the  Bible  as  a  school  manual  by  his  politic 
panegyric  of  it  in  that  aspect  at  a  time  when  bolder 
rationalists  were  striving  to  get  it  excluded  from  the 
State  schools.' 

The  survival  of  theism  itself,  as  well  as  the  common 
preference  in  England  of  such  a  term  as  "agnosticism" 
to  either  "naturalism"  or  "atheism,"  is  in  part  a 
psychological  result  of  social  pressure.  Mr.  Spencer  in 
his  earlier  works  used  the  language  of  deism, ^  at  a  time 
when  Comte  had  discarded  it  ;  and  he  and  many  other 
rationalists  have  later  made  a  serious  stand  for  their 
property  in  the  word  "religion,"  though  the  reasons 
urged  are  as  applicable  to  the  word  "  God,"  and  even  in 
part  to  "Christ."  Draper  and  White  in  the  United 
States,  again,  and  Buckle  and  others  in  England,  have 
shown  how  some  elements  of  essentially  emotional  and 
traditionary  supernaturalism,  in  the  shape  of  theism, 
can  be  long  clung  to  by  able  men  engaged  in  ration- 
alistic and  even  in  anti-theological  argument.  The 
opposition  still  made  by  some  English  Comtists  to 
straightforward  freethinking  propaganda  illustrates  the 
same  normal  tendency.  In  the  English-speaking 
countries  the  coinage  of  the  term  "  agnostic,"  though 
objected  to  by  some  Comtists,  is  largely  on  all  fours  with 
their  own  practice.  In  France  and  Italy,  freethinkers  do 
not  find  it  necessary  to  refine  on  the  term  "atheist "and 
draw  paralogistic  distinctions  ;  the  necessity,  when  felt, 
is  the  psychological  product  of  special  social  conditions. 

In  the  United  States,  with  all  the  relative  freedom  of 
social  and  political  life,  the  pressure  against  open  free- 
thought,  before  noted  as  subsisting  in  the  early  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  is  perhaps  still  as  great  as  in 
Britain.  In  the  middle  decades  of  the  century  the  con- 
ditions had  been  so  little  changed  that  after  the  death  of 

'  I  am  informed  on  g-ood  authority  that  in  later  life  Huxley  changfed 
his  views  on  the  subject.  He  had  alsundant  cause.  As  early  as  1879  he 
is  found  complaining  (pref.  to  Eng.  trans,  of  WACC^ieV^  Freedom  in  Science 
and  Teaching,  p.  xvii)  of  the  mass  of  "falsities  at  present  foisted  upon 
the  young  in  the  name  of  the  church." 

-  E.g.,  the  Education,  small  ed.  pp.  41.  155. 


4o8  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

President  Lincoln,  who  was  certainly  a  non-Christian 
deist,  and  an  agnostic  deist  at  that,'  it  was  sought  to  be 
established  that  he  was  latterly  orthodox.  In  his  presi- 
dential campaign  of  i860  he  escaped  attack  on  his 
opinions  simply  because  his  opponent,  Stephen  A. 
Douglas,  was  likewise  an  unbeliever.^  The  great  negro 
orator,  Frederick  Douglas,  was  as  heterodox  as 
Lincoln. 3  It  is  even  alleged  that  President  Granf*  was 
of  the  same  cast  of  opinion.  Such  is  the  general  drift  of 
intelligent  thought  in  the  United  States,  from  Washing- 
ton onwards  ;  and  still  the  social  conditions  impose  on 
public  men  the  burden  of  concealment,  while  popular 
history  is  garbled  for  the  same  reasons.  Despite  the 
great  propagandist  power  of  the  late  Colonel  Ingersoll, 
therefore,  American  freethought  remains  dependent 
largely  on  struggling  organisations  and  journals, s  and 
its  special  literature  is  rather  of  the  popularising  than 
of  the  scholarly  order.  Nowhere  else  has  every  new 
advance  of  rationalistic  science  been  more  angrily 
opposed  by  the  priesthood  ;  because  nowhere  is  the 
ordinary  prejudice  of  the  priest  more  voluble  or  better- 
bottomed  in  self-complacency.  As  late  as  1891  the 
Methodist  Bishop  Keener  delivered  a  ridiculous  attack 
on  the  evolution  theory  before  the  (Ecumenical  Council 
of  Methodism  at  Washington,  declaring  that  it  had  been 
utterly  refuted  by  a  certain  "wonderful  deposit  of  the 
Ashley  beds."^  Various  professors  in  ecclesiastical 
colleges  have  been  driven  from  their  posts  for  accepting 
in  turn  the  discoveries  of  geology,  biology,  and  the 
"  higher  criticism  "  —  for  instance,  Woodrow  of 
Columbia,  South  Carolina  ;  Toy  of  Louisville ;  Win- 
chell  of  Vanderbilt  University ;  and  more  than  one 
professor   in    the    American    college    at    Bey  rout.  ^     In 

'  Cp.  Lamon's  Life  of  Lincoln,  and  J.  B.  Remsburg-'s  Abraham 
Li7icoln  :  Was  He  a  Christian  ?     (New  York,  1893.) 

-  Remsburg-,  pp.  318-19.  3  Personal  information. 

'•  Remsbiirg-,  p.  324. 

s  Of  these  the  New  York  Truthseeker  has  been  the  most  energ-etic  and 
successful. 

*  White,  Warfare,  i,  81.  '  Id.  i,  84,  86,  314,  317,  318. 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  409 

every  one  of  the  three  former  cases,  it  is  true,  the 
denounced  professor  has  been  called  to  a  better  chair  ; 
and,  as  before  mentioned,  latterly  some  of  the  more 
liberal  clergy  have  even  commercially  exploited  the 
higher  criticism  by  producing  the  "  Rainbow  Bible." 
In  England,  still  more  recently,  the  demand  raised  by 
some  zealots  for  the  dismissal  of  so  distinguished  a 
scholar  as  Professor  Cheyne  from  his  chair,  on  the 
score  oi  his  heresy,  has  come  to  nothing.  But  the 
demand  has  collapsed  rather  because  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  drawing  a  line  which  shall  not  exclude  many 
more  teachers  of  less  advanced  views,  and  impeach 
many  of  the  clergy  of  all  grades,  than  because  of  any 
learning  of  the  lesson  of  tolerance  by  men  who  them- 
selves to-day  hold  opinions  that  were  viewed  with 
horror  a  generation  ago. 

From  these  survevs  there  emerges  the  creneral  result 
that  in  the  British  Islands  and  the  United  States  the 
avowal  of  unbelief  and  the  disinterested  effort  to 
enlighten  others  are  relatively  more  common  among 
the  hand-workers,  whose  incomes  are  not  as  a  rule 
affected  thereby,  than  among  the  middle  classes,  where 
the  economic  motive  is  strong,  and  the  upper,  w^here 
the  social  motive  specially  operates.  Wealthy  Conser- 
vatives never  publicly  avow  unbelief;  yet  it  is  well 
known  that  many  disbelieve.  In  the  House  of 
Commons  and  the  American  Congress  there  are 
probably  scores  of  such  on  both  sides.  It  is  easy  to 
blame  them  ;  as  it  is  easy  to  blame  the  many  clergymen 
who  hold  office  without  conviction.  But  such  insin- 
cerities, in  which  laymen  so  abundantly  share,  are  at 
worst  on  the  same  ethical  footing  as  the  endless 
immoralities  of  ordinary  commerce  ;  the  clergy  being 
under  economic  pressure  like  other  men.  They  have 
further  the  justification  that  in  most  cases  they  have  in 
youth  been  led  or  pushed  into  the  clerical  career  by 
elders  who  did  nothing  to  enlighten  them  on  the  diffi- 
culties they  were  bound  to  meet  with  in  later  life.  Nor 
is  it  finally  desirable,  from  any  point  of  view,  that  all 


41  o  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


the  more  reasonable  minds  should  be  eliminated  from 
the  churches,  leaving  only  the  most  ignorant,  the  most 
unteachable,  and  the  most  intolerant  to  misguide  the 
more  ignorant  laity.  In  any  case,  the  church  bids  fair 
to  subsist  by  the  adherence  of  large  numbers  of  men 
who  do  not  hold  its  creed.  Of  recent  years  some  of  the 
Ethical  Societies  have  sought  to  carry  on  a  non-theolo- 
gical teaching  that  guards  against  being  anti-theological. 
Such  a  policy  escapes  a  number  of  the  ordinary  social 
and  economic  obstacles,  while  incurring  the  special 
difficulties  involved  in  the  application  of  ethics  to  the 
social  problem.  It  does  not  operate,  however,  as  a 
dissolvent  of  theology  save  in  so  far  as  theology  is 
incidentally  criticised  ;  at  least,  the  fact  that  the  same 
view  of  ethics  was  proclaimed  nearly  three  hundred 
years  ago  by  Charron,  and  nearly  two  hundred  years 
ago  in  some  of  the  British  churches,  makes  it  seem 
unlikely  that  its  simple  affirmation  can  undermine  the 
economic  bases  of  supernaturalism. 

In  sum,  other  things  being  equal,  open  freethought  is 
least  common  where  commercialism  is  most  stringent, 
and  in  communities  where  social  pressure  is  most  easily 
felt.  In  Scotland,  where  the  culture-movement  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  succeeded  in  the  nineteenth  by 
a  pietistic  reaction  and  a  new  ecclesiastical  ferment  and 
schism,  the  intellectual  life  is  less  free  than  in  England. 
It  was  so  when  the  clergy  proposed  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  Hume  in  1756  ;  it  was  emphatically  so  when  Buckle 
summed  up  Scotch  life  forty  years  ago  ;  it  is  so  to-day, 
when  the  economic  conditions  send  to  England  and  the 
colonies  most  of  the  innovating  elements,  leaving  the 
rival  churches  in  undisturbed  possession,  with  their 
numerous  rationalistic  clergy  afraid  to  declare  them- 
selves ag^ainst  the  conservative  mass.  An  important 
advance,  indeed,  has  lately  been  forced  upon  the  Scottish 
churches  by  the  unexpected  sequel  of  the  amalgamation 
of  the  Free  and  United  Presbyterian  churches.  This 
was  resented  by  a  small  section  of  the  former,  partly  on 
the  ground  that  they  adhered   to  the  original  polity  of 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  411 

the  Free  Church,  which  the  majority  had  abandoned  ; 
partly  in  resentment  of  the  proclivities  of  a  number  of 
the  innovating  clergy  to  the  higher  criticism.  When 
the  Free  Church  was  established  in  1843,  by  secession 
from  the  State  Church,  it  still  affirmed  the  duty  of  the 
State  to  maintain  a  church,  though  refusing  to  accept 
certain  of  the  conditions  then  enforced.  Latterly  the 
great  majority  of  its  members  have  accepted  the  volun- 
tary basis  and  declared  for  disestablishment ;  whence 
the  amalgamation  with  the  voluntary  church  formerly 
named  the  United  Presbyterian.  It  is  probable  that  the 
ecclesiastico-political  objection  to  this  course  weighed 
much  less  with  the  recalcitrant  minority  than  did  their 
objection  to  the  new  theology  they  saw  gaining  ground 
among  the  modernisers.  Bringing  an  action  at  law 
against  the  majority,  they  won  it  on  appeal  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  were  accordingly  given  possession  of  the 
whole  former  property  of  the  Free  Church.  The 
decision  being  an  outrage  on  the  national  sense  of 
justice,  there  became  necessary  a  legislative  Act  of 
relief  (1905),  which,  in  restoring  the  bulk  of  the  property 
to  the  majority,  provided  that  their  organisation  should 
be  collectively  free  to  modify  its  principles  and  formulas 
at  will.  On  the  introduction  of  this  measure  the  leading 
clergy  of  the  Establishment  claimed  a  similar  power  for 
their  church,  which  a  Conservative  Parliament  gave, 
foreseeing  that  a  church  which  could  not  modify  its 
creed  would  be  intellectually  discredited  in  comparison 
with  one  which  could.  The  creeds  of  the  Scottish 
churches  are  thus  at  present  in  the  melting-pot.  It  is 
avowed  that  almost  no  minister  now  accepts  the  West- 
minster Confession  of  Faith  ;  and  there  is  an  edifying 
uncertainty  as  to  what  is  really  believed  all  round. 
Under  such  circumstances,  though  the  later  develop- 
ments of  rationalism  are  still  scouted  by  those  who 
accept  the  earlier,  orthodoxy  is  unquestionably  weakened ; 
and  it  is  confessed  that  the  strife  between  the  "  Free  " 
sections,  accompanied  as  it  finally  was  by  some  un- 
seemly disturbances,  has  been  "  injurious  to  religion." 


412  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


In  the  United  States,  sheer  preoccupation  with  busi- 
ness, and  lack  of  leisure,  counteract  in  a  measure  the 
relative  advantage  of  social  freedom  ;  and  while  culture 
is  much  more  widely  diffused  than  in  England,  it 
remains  on  the  whole  less  radical  in  the  "educated" 
classes  so-called.  So  far  as  it  is  possible  to  make  a 
quantitative  estimate,  it  may  be  said  that  in  the  more 
densely  populated  parts  of  the  States  there  is  less  of 
studious  freethinking  because  there  is  less  leisure  than 
in  England  ;  but  that  in  the  Western  States  there  is  a 
relative  superiority,  class  for  class,  because  of  the  special 
freedom  of  the  conditions  and  the  independent  character 
of  many  of  the  immigrants  who  constitute  the  new  popu- 
lations.' 

In  the  Australasian  colonies,  again,  there  is  some  such 
relative  superiority  in  freedom  as  is  seen  in  the  American 
West,  and  for  similar  reasons.  In  New  Zealand,  pro- 
minent statesmen,  as  Sir  Robert  Ballance  and  Mr. 
John  Stout,  have  held  office  despite  their  avowed  free- 
thinking;  and  in  Australia  a  popular  freethought  journal 
has  subsisted  for  over  twenty  years.  But  there  too  the 
commercial  environment  and  the  ecclesiastical  basis  of 
endowment  tell  adversely. 

From  the  fact  that  in  New  England  the  supremacy 
appears  to  be  passing  from  Unitarianism  to  Episco- 
palianism,  it  may  be  inferred  that  the  more  religiously 
biassed  types  in  the  former  sect  tend  to  gravitate  to  the 
more  emotional  worship,  and  the  more  rationalistic  to 
withdraw;  though  the  economic  interest  of  the  Unitarian 
clergy  conserves  their  institutions.  In  England  is  seen 
the  analogous  phenomenon  of  the  advance  of  Romanist 
ritualism  in  the  Church  of  England.  While  the  more 
emotional  and  unintellectual  believers  thus  zealously 
promote  what  may  be  termed  the  most  religious  form  of 
religion,  there  is  a  prospect  that  the  many  semi-rational 
conformists  will  be  in  part  driven  to  a  more  rationalist 

'  This  view  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  fact  that  popular  forms  of 
credulity  are  also  found  specially  flourishing  in  the  West.  Cp.  Bryce, 
The  American  Commonwealth,  3rd  cd.  ii,  832-3. 


BRITAIN  AND  THE  UNITED  STATES  413 

attitude  ;  since,  save  for  the  certainly  great  power  of  the 
purse — -seen  in  the  outward  collapse  of  the  Tractarian 
movement  on  Newman's  conversion — Anglican  modera- 
tion is  as  powerless  against  ritualism  as  is  modern 
Protestantism  against  Catholicism  in  general.  For  the 
rest,  all  the  forces  of  religious  conservatism  in  commer- 
cial communities  are  backed  by  the  economic  interest 
of  the  general  newspaper  press,  wherein  multitudes  of 
unbelieving  journalists  perforce  treat  orthodoxy  as  being 
what  it  claims  to  be,  and  at  best  describe  their  own 
opinions  as  "  peculiar  "  when  openly  avowed  by  public 
men.  The  determining  force  is  revenue,  which  depends 
on  advertisements,  which  depend  on  circulation.  For 
lack  of  these  bases  freethinking  journals,  even  when 
aiming  at  comparative  popularity,  must  be  relatively 
expensive.  In  the  United  States  the  habitual  freedom 
of  the  newspapers  allows  of  more  fairplay  to  avowed 
freethought ;  but  the  main  economic  forces  are  similar. 
Thus  on  every  ground  the  organised  forms  of  free- 
thought  are  restricted  and  apparently  uninfluential  in 
comparison  with  the  known  amount  of  rationalism, 
which  nevertheless  quietly  increases  from  decade  to 
decade ;  so  that  within  a  generation  the  intellectual 
balance  has  shifted,  till  the  "sensations"  of  serious 
literature  are  no  longer  produced  by  attacks  on  the 
popular  creed,  but  by  the  few  noteworthy  attempts  to 
justify  it. 

This  last  phenomenon  seems  decisively  significant  as 
to  the  real  state  of  opinion  among  educated  people, 
under  all  the  conformities  of  the  commercial  system. 
The  popular  works  of  Mr.  Drummond,  Mr.  Benjamin 
Kidd,  and  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour  are  the  most  prominent 
pleas  for  Christianity  put  forth  in  England  in  the  past 
twenty  years.  The  first  was  recognised  even  by  many 
theologians  as  a  tissue  of  fallacy  ;  the  second  {Social 
Evolution)  is  a  suicidal  formula  of  professed  irration- 
alism  ;  and  the  third  {The  Foundations  of  Belief)  is  a 
more  skilful  revival  of  the  old  resort  to  skepticism,  so 
often  and  so  vainly  employed  by  apologists  in  the  past. 


414  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


Meanwhile  the  few  remaining  churchmen  of  high 
literary  standing,  as  the  late  Bishop  Stubbs  and  the  late 
Bishop  Creighton,  rank  as  simple  historians,  not  as 
thinkers  ;  and  the  apologetic  labours  of  the  churches  in 
general  range  between  respectable  reiterations  of  Paley 
and  a  popular  traffic  in  "  Christian  Evidences  "  that  is 
beneath  criticism. 

Meanwhile,  new  forces  of  advance  assert  themselves. 
Under  all  the  social  stress  set  up  by  orthodoxy,  women 
are  found  in  ever-increasing  numbers  giving  up  the 
faith,  and  even  doing  effective  rationalist  propaganda. 
Thus  Harriet  Martineau  and  George  Eliot  (Marian 
Evans)  are  specially  significant  names  in  the  history  of 
modern  English  freethought.  The  popularisation  of 
the  Positive  Philosophy  by  the  former,  and  the  transla- 
tions of  Strauss  and  Feuerbach  by  the  latter,  were 
services  as  workmanlike  as  any  done  by  their  male 
contemporaries  ;  and  though  the  reversion  of  Mrs. 
Besant  to  mysticism  in  the  form  of  Theosophy  was  a 
chagrin  to  many,  it  could  not  undo  the  work  she  had 
done  as  a  rationalist  teacher.'  Even  in  the  time  of 
persecution,  in  the  first  half  of  the  century,  women  did 
unflinching  service  to  the  ostracised  cause.  The  second 
wife  of  Richard  Carlile  was  his  worthy  helpmate  ;  and 
Frances  Wright  (Madame  D'Arusmont)  was  in  the 
front  of  all  the  rational  and  ethicaP  propaganda  of  her 
time  (1795-1852). 

I  2.   The  Catholic  Countries. 

As  already  noted,  there  prevails  in  the  Catholic 
countries  a  more  general  and  a  more  direct  division 
between  faith  and  rationalism  than  usually  exists  under 
Protestantism,  where  the  possibilities  of  gradation  and 

'  The  argument,  sometimes  heard,  that  such  a  reversion,  and  such 
recurrences  of  religious  emotion  as  may  be  noted  in  the  latter  years  of 
George  Eliot,  point  to  a  special  and  permanent  unfitness  for  the  ration- 
alist life  among  women,  is  worth  notice  only  for  the  sake  of  pointing  to 
the  quite  contrary  conclusion  deducible  from  the  case  of  Miss  Martineau. 

^  "She  bought  2,000  acres  in  Tennessee,  and  peopled  them  with  slave 
families  she  purchased  and  redeemed  "  (Wheeler,  Biog.  Diet,), 


THE  CATHOLIC  COUNTRIES  415 

adjustment,  as  well  as  the  admission   of  the   laity  to  a 
share  in  church  administration,  moderate  matters.     The 
very    stress    of    papalism,     accord ing-ly,    g-enerates    an 
opposing  energy.     In    Italy,  as  elsewhere,  the  reaction 
after  the   French  Revolution,  especially  after  18 15,  was 
very  powerful,  and  clericalism   flourished  to  a  disastrous 
degree.      All    criticism    of    Catholicism    was    a    penal 
offence  ;  and   in  the  kingdom  of  Naples  alone,  in  1825, 
there  were  27,612  priests,  8,455   monks,  8,185  nuns,  20 
archbishops,  and  73  bishops,  though  in  1807  the  French 
influence     had    caused    the    dissolution    of     some    250 
convents.'     If,  accordingly,   the    mind   of   Italy  was  to 
survive,  it  must  be  by  the  assimilation  of  the  culture  of 
freer  States  ;  and  this  culture,  reinforced  by  the  wTitings 
of  Leopardi,  generated  a  new  intellectual  life,  which  was 
a   main   factor  in  the  achievement  of  Italian   liberation 
from    Austrian     rule.       This     association    of     political 
liberalism  with    heresy    seems   to    be    natural    alike    in 
Catholic  countries  and   in    Russia,  where  the  Church- 
and-State  principle  works  with  only  a  difference   in  the 
positions  of  the  partners.     Thus  Mazzini  was  a  simple 
theist  ;  Garibaldi  held  with  Renan  ;-  and  Gambetta  was 
a  Voltairean.      In   the  Catholic  countries,  too,  commer- 
cialism has  come  later  on  the  scene,  and  is  much  less 
developed  than  in  England  and  America  ;  so  that  social 
pressure  tells  only  partially  on   the  side  of  the  church. 
The  result  is  that  as  a  rule  in  France  and  Italy,  and  to  a 
large  extent  also  in  Spain,  educated  men  are  unbelievers, 
and  atheism   is   no   bar  to  political   influence.     One  of 
the  most    distinguished   of   Italian    scholars.    Professor 
A.  DE  GuBERNATis,  has  in  K\s  Lettiwe  sopra  la  mitologia 
vedica  (1874)  explicitly  treated  the  Christian  legend  as  a 
myth    like  another ;    and    in    France    to-day  prominent 
scholars,  politicians,  and   thinkers  freely  proclaim  their 
adherence  to  the   movement  of  freethought.      Not  only 
has  the  legislature  in  the  past  year  made  an  end  of  the  old 

'  Dr.  Ramag-e,  Nooks  and  Bye-Ways  of  Italy,  1868,   pp.  76,    105-113. 
Rainage  describes  the  helplessness  of  the  better  minds  before  1830. 
-  See  Mr.  MorXey's  Life  of  Glads  fo/ie,  1903,  ii,  iio-iii. 


4i6  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


connection  between  Church  and  State,  but  for  many- 
years  the  Paris  Municipal  Council  has  been  a  predomi- 
nantly freethinking  body.  After  a  period  in  which 
such  teachers  as  Michelet  and  Renan  could  suffer 
suspension,  university  teaching  in  all  three  countries  is 
substantially  open,  and  professors  can  freely  indicate 
their  opinions. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  higher  life  of  all  Catholic 
countries  suffers  from  the  common  assumption  that  a 
religion  of  prayer  and  penance  is  a  necessity  for  women. 
Women  there  are  accordingly  found  as  a  rule  on  the 
side  of  faith  and  churchgoing  :  and  it  results  that  in  all 
social  and  domestic  matters  in  which  they  are  intimately- 
concerned  the  church  has  still  a  strong  footing. 
Baptisms,  marriages,  and  funerals  arfe  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  religious  functions,  the  men  shrugging  ' 
their  shoulders  and  making  no  general  effort  to  enlighten 
their  wives  and  daughters.'  In  this  state  of  things  there 
is  as  constant  an  element  of  loss  to  progress  as  takes 
place  in  our  own  society  through  the  organised  activity 
of  the  churches  ;  a  continual  reproduction  of  artificial 
ignorance,  so  to  speak,  going  on  in  both  cases.  A 
reform  in  the  education  and  status  of  women  is  therefore 
as  peculiarly  necessary  to  the  advance  of  freethought 
in  the  Catholic  countries  as  is  a  correction  of  com- 
mercialist  conditions  in  ours.  English  and  American 
experience  goes  to  show  that  women  under  fair  condi- 
tions can  live  the  rationalist  life  as  well  as  men,  their 
relapses  to  mysticism  being  no  more  frequent  than  those 
of  men,  and  much  less  frequent  than  their  abandonment 
of  supernaturalist  beliefs.  Indeed,  there  have  been  cases 
enough  of  freethinking  educated  women  in  France  and 
Italy  to  show  the  error  of  the  conventional  assumption 
among  the  other  sex.  It  is  so  far  satisfactory  that  the 
Socialist  movement,  which  gains  ground  among  all  the 
"  Latin "    peoples,    makes    substantially   for   the    more 

'  The  case  of  M.  Littr^,  whose  family  pressed  him  to  recant  on  his 
deathbed  and  destroyed  his  papers  after  his  death,  is  a  painful  illustra- 
tion of  the  frequent  outcome  of  such  a  policy. 


GERMANY  417 


equal    culture    of  the    sexes,    as   against    the    contrary 
policy  of  the  church. 

§  3.    Germany. 

Alongside  of  the  inveterate  rationalism  of  modern 
Germany,  a  no  less  inveterate  bureaucratism  preserves 
a  certain  official  conformity  to  religion.  University 
freedom  does  not  extend  to  open  and  direct  criticism  of 
the  orthodox  creed.'  On  the  other  hand,  the  applause 
won  by  Virchow  in  1877  on  his  declaration  against  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  and  the  tactic  resorted  to  by  him 
in  putting  upon  that  doctrine  the  responsibility  of 
Socialist  violence,  are  instances  of  the  normal  operation 
of  the  lower  motives  against  freedom  in  scientific 
teaching.-  The  pressure  operates  in  other  spheres  in 
Germany,  especially  under  such  a  regimen  as  the 
present.  Men  who  never  ^o  to  church  save  on  official 
occasions,  and  who  have  absolutely  no  belief  in  the 
church's  doctrine,  nevertheless  remain  nominally  its 
adherents  y  and  the  Press  laws  make  it  peculiarly 
difficult  to  reach  the  common  people  with  freethinking 
literature,  save  through  Socialist  channels.  Thus  the 
Catholic  Church  is  perhaps  nowhere — save  in  Ireland 
and  the  United  States — more  practically  influential  than 
in  nominally  "  Protestant  "  Germany,  where  it  wields  a 
compact  vote  of  a  hundred  or  more  in  the  Reichstag,  and 
can  generally  count  on  well-filled  churches  as  beside  the 
half-empty  temples  of  Protestantism. 

Another  circumstance  partly  favourable  to  reaction  is 
the  simple  maintenance  of  all  the  old  theological  chairs 
in  the  universities.  As  the  field  of  scientific  work 
widens,  and  increasing  commerce  raises  the  social 
standard  of  comfort,  men  of  original   intellectual  power 

'  It  is  recorded  by  the  friends  of  Ukberweg,  author  of  the  fairest  of 
modern  histories  of  philosophy,  that  he  was  an  atheist  and  materialist. 
But  this  could  only  here  and  there  be  divined  from  his  writing". 

-  See  Haeckel's  Freedom  in  Science  and  Teaching,  Eng".  trans,  with 
pref.  by  Huxley,  1879,  pp.  xix,  xxv,  xxvii,  89-90  ;  and  Clifford. 

3  Biichner,  for  straig'htforwardly  renouncing-  his  connection  with   the 
State  Church,  was  blamed  by  many  who  held  his  philosophic  opinions. 
VOL.    II  '  2E 


4i8  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  TV  THE  NATIONS 

grow  less  apt  to  devote  themselves  to  theological 
pursuits  even  under  the  comparatively  free  conditions 
which  so  long  kept  German  Biblical  scholarship  far 
above  that  of  other  countries.  It  can  hardly  be  said  that 
men  of  the  mental  calibre  of  Strauss,  Baur,  Volkmar, 
and  Wellhausen  continue  to  arise  among  the  specialists 
in  their  studies.  Harnack,  the  most  prominent  German 
Biblical  scholar  of  our  day,  despite  his  great  learning, 
creates  no  such  impression  of  originality  and  insight, 
and,  though  latterly  forced  forward  by  more  independent 
minds,  exhibits  often  a  very  uncritical  orthodoxy.  Thus 
it  is  a  priori  possible  enough  that  the  orthodox  reactions 
so  often  claimed  have  actually  occurred,  in  the  sense 
that  the  experts  have  reverted  to  a  prior  type.  A  scien- 
tifically-minded ''theologian"  in  Germany  has  now  little 
official  scope  for  his  faculty  save  in  the  analysis  of  the 
Hebrew  Sacred  Books  and  the  New  Testament  docu- 
ments as  such  ;  and  this  has  there  been  on  the  whole  very 
well  done  ;  but  there  is  a  limit  to  the  attraction  of  such 
studies  for  minds  of  a  modern  cast.  Thus  there  is 
always  a  chance  that  chairs  will  be  filled  by  men  of 
another  type.' 

Meanwhile,  under  the  sounder  moral  and  economic 
conditions  of  the  life  of  the  proletariate,  straightforward 
rationalism,  as  apart  from  propaganda,  is  becoming 
more  and  more  the  rule.  A  Protestant  pastor  some 
years  ago  made  an  investigation  into  the  state  of 
religious  opinion  among  the  working  Socialists  of  some 
provincial  towns  and  rural  districts,  and  found  every- 
where a  determined  attitude  of  rationalism.  The 
formula  of  the  Social  Democrats,  "  Religion  is  a  private 
matter,"  he  bitterly  perceives  to  carry  the  implication  "a 
private  matter  for  the  fools";  and  while  he  holds  that 
the  belief  in  a  speedy  collapse  of  the  Christian  religion 
is  latterly  less  common  than  formerly  among  the  upper 
and  middle  classes,  he  complains  that  the  Socialists  are 

'  Cp.  Zeller's  pref.  to  his  work  on  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  Eng.  trans. 
1875,  i,  89,  as  to  the  tendency  of  German  Protestantism  to  stagnate  in 
■•  Bvzantine  conditions." 


R  USSIA  A  ND  THE  SCA  NDINA  VI AN  S  TA  TES  4 1 9 


not  similarly  enlightened.'  Rebel's  drastic  teaching"  as 
to  the  economic  and  social  conditions  of  the  rise  of 
Christianity,-  and  the  materialistic  theory  of  history  set 
forth  by  Marx  and  Engels,  he  finds  generally  accepted. 
Not  only  do  most  of  the  party  leaders  declare  themselves 
to  be  without  religion,  but  those  who  do  not  so  declare 
themselves  are  so  no  less.^  Nor  is  the  unbelief  a  mere 
sequel  to  the  Socialism  :  often  the  development  is  the 
other  way.^  The  opinion  is  almost  universal,  further, 
that  the  clergy  in  general  do  not  believe  what  they 
teach. 5  Atheists  are  numerous  among  the  peasantry  ; 
more  numerous  among  the  workers  in  the  provincial 
towns  ;  and  still  more  numerous  in  the  large  towns  f 
and  while  many  take  a  sympathetic  view  of  Jesus  as  a 
man  and  teacher,  not  a  few  deny  his  historic  existence^ 
— a  view  set  forth  in  non-Socialist  circles  also.^ 

§  4.  Russia  and  the  Scandiiiavian  States. 

Under  the  widely-different  political  conditions  in 
Russia  and  the  Scandinavian  States,  it  is  the  more 
significant  that  in  all  alike  rationalism  is  in  the  ascen- 
dant among  the  educated  classes.  In  Norway  the 
latter,  perhaps,  include  a  larger  proportion  of  working 
people  than  can  be  so  classed  even  in  Germany  ; 
and  rationalism  is  relatively  hopeful,  though  social 
freedom  is  still  far  from  perfect.  It  is  the  old  story  of 
toleration  for  a  dangerously  well-placed  freethought,  and 
intolerance  for  that  w^hich  reaches  the  common  people. 
The  Scandinavian  churches,  however,  though  backward 
and  bigoted,  have  no  such  relative  wealth  and  power  as 
the  English,  or  even  the  American  ;  and  the  intellectual 
balance,  as  already  noted,  is  distinctly  on  the  free- 
thought  side,  though  in  Sweden,  of  late  years,  there  is 

'  Pastor  W.  Studemuiid,  Der  luoderne  Unglaube  in  den  unteren 
Stdnden,  1901,  pp.  17,  21. 

"  Glosseii  zu  Yves  Giiyot's  itud  Sigismiuid  Lacroix's^''Die  rvahre  Gestalt 
des  Ch  risten  tti  ms. " 

3  Studemund,  p.  22.  ^  Id.  p.  23.  s  ]d.  p.  27.  *>  Id.  pp.  37-38. 

7  Id.  pp.  40-42.  Cp.  p.  43.  I'astor  Studemund  cites  other  inquirers, 
notably  Rade,  Gebhardt,  Lorenz,  and  Dietzgfen,  all  to  the  same  effect. 

^  E.g.,  Pastor  A.  Kiilthoff's   Was  -.vissen  ivir  von  Jesus  ?  1904. 


420  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

seen  the  common  tendency  to  a  slackening  in  the  free- 
thought  attack  now  that  the  old  orthodoxy  is  under- 
mined and  shaken.  There,  as  elsewhere,  the  stress  of 
intellectual  strife  runs  for  the  time  rather  to  social  than 
to  religious  problems  ;  and  commercialism  dulls  the 
edge  of  educative  zeal.  But  the  transition  from  faith 
to  reason  cannot  be  undone.  It  would  be  well  if  the 
rationalist  temper  could  so  far  assert  itself  as  to  check 
the  unhappy  racial  jealousies  of  the  three  Scandinavian 
peoples,  and  discredit'  their  irrationalist  belief  in  funda- 
mental differences  of  "  national  character"  among  them. 
But  that  problem,  like  those  of  industry  and  social 
structure,  is  still  to  solve,  for  them  as  for  other  races. 

In   Russia,  rationalism   has  before   it  the  still   harder 
task  of  transmuting  a  system  of  tyranny  into  one  of  self- 
government.     In    no    European    country,    perhaps,    is 
rationalism  more  general  among  the  educated  classes  ; 
and   in  none  is  there  a  greater  mass  of  popular  igno- 
rance.'    The  popular  icon-worship  in  Moscow  can  hardly 
be  paralleled  outside  of  Asia.     On  the  other  hand,  the 
aristocracy  became  Voltairean  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  has  remained  more  or  less  incredulous  since,  though 
it  now  joins  hands  with  the  church  ;  while  the  democratic 
movement,  in  its  various  phases  of  socialism,  constitu- 
tionalism,   and    Nihilism,     has     been     markedly    anti- 
religious    since    the    second    quarter   of    the    century.^ 
Subsidiary  revivals  of  mysticism,  such  as  are  chronicled 
in  other  countries,  are  of  course  to  be  seen  in  Russia  ; 
but  the  instructed  class,  the  intelliguentia^  is  essentially 
naturalistic  in  its  cast  of  thought.     This  state  of  things 
subsists  despite    the    readiness  of  the    government     to 
suppress  the  slightest  sign  of  official  heterodoxy  in  the 
universities.3     The  struggle  is  thus  substantially  between 

'  "  The  people  in  the  country  do  not  read  ;  in  the  towns  they  read 
little.  The  journals  are  little  circulated.  In  Russia  one  never  sees  a 
cabman,  an  artisan,  a  labourer  reading  a  newspaper"  (Ivan  Strannik, 
La  pensee  russe  co?itej>ipo)-aine,  1903,  p.  5). 

-  Cp.  E.  Lavig-ne,  Introduction  a  I'histoire  du  nihilisme  russe,  1880, 
pp.  149,  161,  224  ;  Arnaudo,  Le  Nihilisme,  French  trans,  pp.  37,  58,  61, 
63,  77,  86,  etc.  ;  Tikhomirov,  La  Russie,  p.  290. 

3  Tikhomirov,  La  Russie,  pp.  325-6,  338-9. 


MODERN  JEWRY  421 


the  Spirit  of  freedom  and  that  of  despotism  ;  and  the 
fortunes  of  freethought  will  go  with  the  former.  Were 
Russia  an  isolated  community,  both  alike  might  be 
strangled  by  the  superior  brute  force  of  the  autocracy, 
resting  on  the  loyalty  of  the  ignorant  mass  ;  but  the 
unavoidable  contact  of  surrounding  civilisations  seems 
to  make  such  suppression  impossible.  Such  was  the 
critical  forecast  in  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  In  1906  the  prediction  can  be  made  with  a 
new  confidence. 

§  5.  Modern  Jeivry. 

In  the  culture-life  of  the  dispersed  Jews,  in  the 
modern  period,  there  is  probably  as  much  variety  of 
credence  in  regard  to  religion  as  occurs  in  the  life  of 
Christendom  so  called.  Such  names  as  those  of 
Spinoza,  Jacobi,  Moses  Mendelssohn,  Heine,  and  Karl 
Marx  tell  sufficiently  of  Jewish  service  to  freethought ; 
and  each  one  of  these  must  have  had  many  disciples  of 
his  own  race.  Deism  among  the  educated  Jews  of 
Germany  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  probably 
common.'  The  famous  Rabbi  Elijah  of  Wilna 
(d.  1797),  entitled  the  Gaon,  "the  great  one,"  set  up 
a  miOvement  of  relatively  rationalistic  pietism  which 
led  to  the  establishment  in  1803  of  a  Rabbinical  college 
at  Walosin,  which  has  flourished  ever  since,  and  had  in 
1888  no  fewer  than  400  students,  among  whom  goes  on 
a  certain  amount  of  independent  study.-  In  the  freer 
world  outside,  critical  thought  has  asserted  itself  within 
the  pale  of  orthodox  Judaism  ;  witness  such  a  writer  as 
Nachman  Krochmal  (i 785-1840),  whose  posthumous 
Guide  to  the  Perplexed  of  the  Time  (1851),  though  not 
a  scientific  work,  is  ethically  and  philosophically  in 
advance  of  the  orthodox  Judaism  of  its  age.  Of 
Krochmal  it  has  been  said  that  he  "  was  inspired  in 
his  work  by  the    study  of   Hegel,  just  as   Maimonides 

'  Cp.    Schechter,   Studies    in  Judaism,    1896,    pp.   59,    71.     Schechter 
writes  with  a  marked  Judaic  prejudice. 
-  Id.  pp.  1 17-1 18. 


422  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


had  been  by  the  study  of  Aristotle."'  The  result  is 
only  a  liberalising  of  Jewish  orthodoxy  in  the  light  of 
historic  study,-  such  as  went  on  among  Christians  in 
the  same  period  ;  but  it  is  thus  a  stepping-stone  to 
further  science. 

To-day,  educated  Jewry  is  divided  in  somewhat  the 
same  proportions  as  Christendom  into  absolute  ration- 
alists and  liberal  and  fanatical  believers  ;  and  represen- 
tatives of  all  three  types,  of  different  social  grades,  may 
be  found  among  the  Zionists,  whose  movement  for  the 
acquisition  of  a  new  racial  home  has  attracted  so  much 
attention  and  sympathy  in  recent  years.  Whether  or 
not  that  movement  attains  to  any  decisive  political 
success,  Judaism  clearly  cannot  escape  the  solvent 
influences  which  affect  all  European  opinion.  As  in 
the  case  of  the  Christian  church,  the  synagogue  in  the 
centres  of  culture  keeps  the  formal  adherence  of  some 
who  no  longer  think  on  its  plane  ;  but  while  attempts 
are  made  from  time  to  time  to  set  up  more  rationalistic 
institutions  for  Jews  with  the  modern  bias,  the  general 
tendency  is  to  a  division  between  devotees  of  the  old 
forms  and  those  who  have  decided  to  live  by  reason. 

§  6.   The  Oriental  Civilisations. 

We  have  already  seen,  in  discussing  the  culture 
histories  of  India,  China,  and  Moslem  Persia,  how 
ancient  elements  of  rationalism  continue  to  germinate 
more  or  less  obscurely  in  the  unpropitious  soils  of 
Asiatic  life.  Ignorance  is  in  most  oriental  countries 
too  immensely  preponderant  to  permit  of  any  other 
species  of  survival.  But  sociology,  while  recognising 
the  vast  obstacles  to  the  higher  life  presented  by  condi- 
tions which  with  a  fatal  facility  multiply  the  lower,  can 
set  no  limit  to  the  possibilities  of  upward  evolution. 
The  case  of  Japan  is  a  sufficient  rebuke  to  the  thought- 
less iterators  of  the  formula  of  the  "  unprogressiveness 

'  Zunz,  cited  by  Schechter,  p.  79. 

^  Whence  Krochmal  is  termed  the  Father  of  Jewish  Science.  Id. 
p.  81. 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILISATIOXS  423 

of  the  East."  While  a  cheerfully  superstitious  relii^ion 
is  there  still  normal  anion  of  the  mass,  the  transformation 
of  the  political  ideals  and  practice  of  the  nation  under 
the  influence  of  European  example  is  so  g"reat  as  to  be 
unparalleled  in  human  history  ;  and  it  has  inevitably 
involved  the  substitution  of  rationalism  for  super- 
naturalism  among  the  great  majority  of  the  educated 
younger  generation.  The  late  Yukichi  Fukuzawa,  who 
did  more  than  any  other  man  to  prepare  the  Japanese 
mind  for  the  great  transformation  effected  in  his  time, 
was  spontaneously  a  freethinker  from  his  childhood;' 
and  through  a  long  life  of  devoted  teaching  he  trained 
thousands  to  a  naturalist  way  of  thought.  That  they 
should  revert  to  Christian  or  native  orthodoxy  seems  as 
impossible  as  such  an  evolution  is  seen  to  be  in  educated 
Hindostan,  where  the  higher  orders  of  intelligence  are 
probably  not  relatively  more  common  than  among  the 
Japanese.  The  final  question,  there  as  everywhere,  is 
one  of  social  reconstruction  and  organisation  ;  and  in 
the  enormous  population  of  China  the  problem,  though 
very  different  in  degree  of  imminence,  is  the  same  in 
kind.  Perhaps  the  most  hopeful  consideration  of  all  is 
that  of  the  ever-increasing  inter-communication  which 
makes  European  and  American  progress  tend  in  every 
succeeding  generation  to  tell  more  and  more  on  Asiatic 

life. 

As  to  Japan,  Professor  B.  H.  Cliamberlain,  a  writer  with 
irrationalist  leanings,  pronounces  that  the  Japanese  "  now 
bow  down  before  the  shrine  oi  Herbert  Spencer"  {Things 
Japanese,  3rd  ed.  i8g8,  p.  321.  Cp.  Religious  Systems  of  the 
World,  3rd  ed.  p.  103),  proceeding  in  another  connection 
(p.  352)  to  describe  them  as  esse^itiaUy  an  undevotional  people. 
Such  a  judgment  somewhat  shakes  trust.  The  Japanese 
people  in  the  past  have  exhibited  the  amount  of  superstition 
normal  in  their  culture  stage  (cp.  the  Voyages  de  C.  P. 
Thunberg  an  Japan,  P'rench  trans.  1796,  iii,  206);  and  in  our 
own  day  they  differ  from  Western  peoples  on  this  side  merely 
in  respect  of  their  greater  general  serenity  of  temperament. 
There  were   in  Japan  in   1894   no  fewer  than  71,831  Buddhist 

'  A  Life  of  Mr.   Vukirlii  Fu/^iiza'rva,  hy  Asa.ia.ru  Mlyamori,  revised   by 
Professor  E.  H.  Vickers,  Tokyo,  1902,  pp.  9-10. 


424  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  HV  THE  NATIONS 


temples,  and  190,803  Shinto  temples  and  shrines  ;  and  the 
larg-est  temple  of  all,  costing-  "several  million  dollars,"  was 
built  in  the  last  dozen  years  of  the  nineteenth  century.  To  the 
larger  shrines  there  are  habitual  pilgrimag-es,  the  numbers 
annually  visiting  one  leading  Buddhist  shrine  reaching 
from  200,000  to  250,000,  while  at  the  Shinto  shrine  of  Kompira 
the  pilgfrims  are  said  to  number  about  qoo,ooo  each  year.  (See 
The  Evolution  of  the  Japanese,  1903,  by  L.  Gulick,  an  American 
missionary  org-anlser.) 

Professor  Chamberlain  appears  to  construe  "devotional" 
in  the  light  of  his  personal  conception  of  true  devotion.  Yet  a 
Christian  observer  testifies,  of  tlie  revi\alist  sect  of  Nichirenites, 
"the  Ranters  of  Buddhism,"  that  "the  wildest  excesses  that 
seek  the  mantle  of  religion  in  other  lands  are  by  them  equalled 
if  not  excelled  "  (Grifhs,  The  Mikado's  Empire,  1S76,  p.  163)  ; 
and  Professor  Chamberlain  admits  that  "the  religion  of  the 
family  binds  them  [the  Japanese  in  general,  including  the 
'most  materialistic']  down  in  truly  sacred  bonds";  while 
another  writer,  who  thinks  Christianity  desirable  for  Japan, 
though  he  apparently  ranks  Japanese  morals  above  Christian, 
declares  that  in  his  travels  he  was  much  reassured  by  the 
superstition  of  the  innkeepers,  feeling-  thankful  that  his  hosts 
were  "not  Agnostics  or  Secularists,"  but  devout  believers  in 
future  punishments  (Tracy,  Rambles  through  Japan  without  a 
Guide,  1892,  pp.  131,  276,  etc.). 

A  third  authority  with  Japanese  experience.  Professor  W.  G. 
Dixon,  while  noting-  that  "  aniong  certain  classes  in  Japan  not 
only  religious  earnestness  but  fanaticism  and  superstition  still 
prevail,"  decides  that  "at  the  same  time  it  remains  true  that 
the  Japanese  are  not  in  the  main  a  very  religious  people,  and 
that  at  the  present  da}'  religion  is  in  lower  repute  than  probably 
it  has  ever  been  in  the  country's  history.  Religious  indifference 
is  one  of  the  prominent  features  of  new  Japan  "  {The  Land 
of  the  Morning-,  1882,  p.  517).  The  reconciliation  of  these 
estimates  lies  in  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  Japanese 
populace  is  religious  in  very  much  the  same  way  as  those  of 
Italy  and  England,  while  the  more  educated  classes  are 
rationalistic,  not  because  of  any  "essential"  incapacity  for 
"  devotion,"  but  because  of  enlightenment,  and  lack  of  counter- 
vailing social  pressure.  To  the  eye  of  the  devotional  Protestant, 
the  Catholics  of  Italy,  with  their  regard  to  externals,  seem 
"essentially"  irreligious  ;  and  vice  versa.  Buddhism  triumphed 
over  Shintoism  in  Japan  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times 
precisely  because  its  lore  and  ritual  make  so  much  niore  appeal 
to  the  devotional  sense.  (Cp.  Chamberlain,  pp.  358-362  ; 
Dixon,  ch.    x;   Relii^ious   Systems  of  the    World,   pp.   103,  11 1  ; 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILISATIONS  425 

Griffis,  p.  166.)  But  the  aesthetically  charming  cult  of  the 
family,  with  its  poetic  recognition  of  ancestral  spirits  (as  to 
which  see  Lafcadio  Wq-avw,  Japan  :  An  Attempt  at  Interpreta- 
tion, 1904),  seems  to  hold  its  ground  as  well  as  any. 

So  unixersal  is  sociological  like  other  law,  that  we  find  in 
Japan,  among  some  freethinkers,  the  same  disposition  as 
among  some  in  Europe  to  decide  that  religion  is  necessary  for 
the  people.  Professor  Chamberlain  (p.  352)  cites  Mr.  Fukuzawa, 
"Japan's  most  representative  thinker  and  educationist,"  as 
openly  declaring  that  "  It  goes  without  saving  that  the  main- 
tenance oi  peace  and  security  in  society  requires  a  religion. 
For  this  purpose  any  religion  will  do.  I  lack  a  religious 
nature,  and  have  never  believed  in  any  religion.  I  am  thus 
open  to  the  charge  that  I  am  advising  others  to  be  religious 
while  I  am  not  so.     Yet  my  conscience  does  not  permit  me  to 

clothe  myself  with  religion  when  I  have  it  not  at  heart Of 

religions  there  are  several  kinds — Buddhism,  Christianity,  and 
what   not.      From  my  standpoint   there  is  no  more  difference 

between  those  than  between  green  tea  and  black See  that 

the  stock   is  well    selected  and    the   prices  cheap "  {Japaii 

Herald,  September  9th,  1897).  Further  reflection,  marked  by 
equal  candour,  may  lead  the  pupils  of  Mr.  Fukuzawa  to  see 
that  nations  cannot  be  led  to  adore  any  form  of  "  tea"  by  the 
mere  assurance  of  its  indispensableness  from  leaders  who 
confess  they  never  take  any.  His  view  is  doubtless  shared  by 
those  priests  concerning  whom  "  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
in  their  fundamental  beliefs  the  more  scholarly  of  the  Shinshiu 
priests  differ  very  widely  from  the  materialistic  agnostics  of 
Europe"  (Dixon,  p.  516).  In  this  state  of  things  the  Christian 
thinks  he  sees  his  special  opportunity.  Professor  Dixon  writes 
(p.  518),  in  the  manner  of  the  missionary,  that  "decaying 
shrines  and  broken  gods  are  to  be  seen  everywhere.  Not  only 
IS  there  indifference,  but  there  is  a  rapidh^-growing  skepticism. 

The  masses   too  are  becoming  affected  by  it Shintoism 

and Buddhism  are  doomed.     What  is  to  take  their  place  ? 

It   must   be  either  Christianity  or  Atheism.     We  have  the 

brightest  hopes  that  the  former  will  triumph  in  the  near 
future " 

The  American  missionary  before  cited,  Mr.  Gulick,  argues 
alternately  that  the  educated  Japanese  are  religious  and  that 
they  are  not,  meaning  that  they  have  "religious  instincts," 
while  rejecting  current  creeds.  The  so-called  religious  instinct 
is  in  fact  simply  the  spirit  of  moral  and  intellectual  seriousness. 
Mr.  Gulick's  summing-up,  as  distinct  from  his  theory  and 
forecast,  is  as  follows  :  "  For  about  three  hundred  years  the 
intelligence  of  the   nation   has  been  dominated  by  Confucian 


426  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 

thought,  which   rejects  active   belief    in   supra-human  beings. 

The  tendency  of  all   persons  trained  in  Confucian  classics 

was  towards  thoroughgoing  skepticism  as  to  divine  beings  and 
their  relation  to  this  world.  For  this  reason,  beyond  doubt, 
has  Western  agnosticism  found  so  easy  an  entrance  into  Japan. 

Complete    indifference    to    religion    is    characteristic   of  the 

educated  classes  of  to-day .  Japanese  and  foreigners.  Christians 
and  non-Christians  alike,  unite  in  this  opinion.  The  impression 
usually  conveyed  by  this  statement,  however,  is  that  agnos- 
ticism is  a   new   thing    in  Japan.       In    point  of  fact,   the    old 

agnosticism  is  merely  reinforced   by the  agnosticism  of  the 

West"(77zt'  Evolution  of  the  Japanese,  pp.  286-7).  This  may 
be  taken  as  broadly  accurate.  Cp.  the  author's  paper  on 
"  Freethought  in  Japan"  in  the  Agnostic  Annua/  {or  1906. 
Professor  E.  H.  Parker  notes  {China  and  Religion,  1905,  p.  263) 
that  "  the  Japanese  in  translating  Western  books  are  beginning, 
to  the  dismay  of  our  missionaries,  to  leave  out  all  the 
Christianity  that  is  in  them." 

The  intellectual  evolution,  however,  must  depend  on 
the  economic  and  social.  Rationalism  on  any  large 
scale  is  always  a  product  of  culture  ;  and  culture  for  the 
mass  of  the  people  of  Japan  has  only  recently  begun. 
Down  till  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  nothing 
more  than  sporadic  freethought  existed.  Some  famous 
captains  were  irreverent  as  to  omens,'  and  the  great 
founder  of  modern  feudalism,  lyeyasu,  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  denounced  the  sacrifices  of  vassals  at  graves, 
and  even  cited  Confucius  as  ridiculing  the  burial  of 
effigies  in  substitution.^  But,  as  elsewhere  under 
similar  conditions,  such  displays  of  originality  were 
confined  to  the  ruling  caste. ^  I  have  seen,  indeed,  a 
delightful  popular  satire,  apparently  a  product  of  mother- 
wit,  on  the  methods  of  popular  Buddhist  shrine-making; 
but,  supposing  it  to  be  genuine  and  vernacular,  it  can 
stand  only  for  that  m.easure  of  freethought  which  is 
never  absent  from  any  society   not    pithed    by  a    long 

'  Lafcadio  Hearn,  Japan:  An  Atfonpf  at  Iiitcrprefafion,  1904,  p.  168. 
>  Id.  p.  313  ;  cp.  p.  46. 

3  Thus  the  third  emperor  of  the  Min^■  dynasty  in  China  (1425-1435), 
referring-  to  the  beHef  in  a  future  life,  makes  the  avowal  :  "  I  am  fain 
to  sigh  with  despair  wlien  I  see  that  in  our  own  day  men  are  just  as 
superstitious   as  ever"   (Professor  E.    H.    Parker,    China  and  Religion, 

1905.  P-  99)- 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILISATIONS  427 

process  of  religious  tyranny.  Old  Japan,  with  its 
intense  feudal  discipline  and  its  indurated  etiquette, 
exhibited  the  social  order,  the  grace,  the  moral  charm, 
and  the  intellectual  vacuity  of  a  hive  of  bees.  The 
higher  mental  life  was  hardly  in  evidence  ;  and  the 
ethical  literature  of  native  inspiration  is  of  no  impor- 
tance.' To  this  day  the  educated  Chinese,  though 
lacking  in  Japanese  "  efficiency  "  and  devotion  to  drill 
of  all  kinds,  are  the  more  freely  intellectual  in  their 
habits  of  mind.  The  Japanese  feudal  system,  indeed, 
was  so  immitigably  ironbound,  so  incomparably  destruc- 
tive of  individuality  in  word,  thought,  and  deed,  that 
only  in  the  uncodified  life  of  art  and  handicraft  was  any 
free  play  of  faculty  possible.  What  has  happened  of 
late  is  the  rapid  and  docile  assimilation  of  western 
science.  Another  and  a  necessarily  longer  step  is  the 
independent  development  of  the  speculative  and  critical 
intelligence  ;  and  in  the  East,  as  in  the  West,  this  is 
subject  to  economic  conditions. 

A  similar  generalisation  holds  good  as  to  the  other 
Oriental  civilisations.  Analogous  developments  to 
those  seen  in  the  latter-day  Mohammedan  world,  and 
equally  marked  by  fluctuation,  have  been  noted  in  the 
mental  life  alike  of  the  non-Mohammedan  and  the 
Mohammedan  peoples  of  India  ;  and  at  the  present  day 
the  thought  of  the  relatively  small  educated  class  is 
undoubtedly  much  aft'ected  by  the  changes  going  on  in 
that  of  Europe,  and  especially  of  England.  The  vast 
Indian  masses,  however,  are  far  from  anything  in  the 
nature  of  critical  culture  ;  and  though  some  system  of 
education  for  them  is  probably  on  the  way  to  establish- 
ment,- their  life  must  long  remain  quasi-primitive, 
mentally  as  well  as  physically.  Buddhism  is  theoreti- 
cally more  capable  of  adaptation  to  a  rationalist  view  of 
life  than  is  Christianity  ;  but  its  intellectual  activities  at 
present   seem    to    tend    more    towards    an    "esoteric" 

'  See  Hearn,  as  cited,  passim. 

-  Cp.  Sir  F.  S.  P.  Lely,  Suggestlotis  for  the  Better  Governing  of  India, 
1906,  p.  59. 


428  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


credulity  than  towards  a  rational  or  scientific  adjustment 

to  life. 

Of  the  nature  of  the  influence  of  Buddhism  in  Burmah, 
where  it  has  prospered,  a  vivid  and  thoughtful  account  is  given 
in  the  recent  work  of  H.  Fielding-,  The  Soul  of  a  People,  1898. 
x\t  its  best,  the  cult  there  deifies  the  Buddha  ;  elsewhere,  it 
is  interwoven  with  aboriginal  polytheism  and  superstition 
(Davids,  Buddhism,  pp.  207-211  ;  Max  Miiller,  Anthropological 
Religion,  p.  132). 

Within  Brahmanism,  again,  there  have  been  at  different 
times  attempts  to  set  up  partly  naturalistic  reforms  in  religious 
thought — e.g.,  that  of  Chaitanya  in  the  sixteenth  century  ; 
but  these  have  never  been  pronouncedly  free  th  hi  king,  and 
Chaitanya  preached  a  "  surrender  of  all  to  Krishna,"  very  much 
in  the  manner  of  evangelical  Christianity.  Finally  he  has  been 
deified  by  his  followers.      (Miiller,  Nat.  Rel.  p.  100  ;  Phvs.  Rel. 

P-  356.) 

More  definitely  freethinking  was  the  monotheistic  cult  set 
up  among  the  Sikhs  in  the  fifteenth  centur}-,  as  the  history 
runs,  by  Nanak,  who  had  been  influenced  both  bv  Parsees  and 
by  Mohammedans,  and  whose  ethical  system  repudiated  caste. 
But  though  Nanak  objected  to  any  adoration  of  himself,  he 
and  all  his  descendants  have  been  virtually  deified  by  his 
devotees,  despite  their  profession  of  a  theoretically  pantheistic 
creed.  (Cp.  De  la  Saussaye,  Manual  of  the  Science  of  Religion, 
Eng.  trans,  pp.  659-662  ;  M tiller,  Phvs.  Rel.  p.  355.)  Trumpp 
{Die  Religion  der  Sikhs,  1881,  p.  123)  tells  of  other  Sikh  sects, 
including  one  of  a  markedly  atheistic  character  belonging  to 
the  nineteenth  century  ;  but  all  alike  seem  to  sink  towards 
Hinduism. 

Similarly  among  the  Jainas,  who  compare  with  the 
Buddhists  in  their  nominal  atheism  as  in  their  tenderness  to 
animals  and  in  some  other  respects,  there  has  been  decline  and 
compromise  ;  and  their  numbers  appear  steadily  to  dwindle, 
though  in  India  they  survived  while  Buddhism  disappeared. 
Cp.  De  la  S-Aussa-ye,  Manual,  pp.  557-563;  Rev.  J.  Robson, 
Hinduism,  1874,  pp.  80-86;  Tiele,  Outlines,  p.  141.  Finally, 
the  Brahmo-Somaj  movement  of  the  present  century  appears  to 
have  come  to  little  in  the  way  of  rationalism  (Mitchell, 
Hinduism,  pp.  224-246  ;  De  la  Saussaye,  pp.  669-671  ;  TIele, 
p.  160). 

The  principle  of  the  interdependence  of  the  external 
and  the  internal  life,  finally,  applies  even  in  the  case 
of  Turkey.  The  notion  that  Turkish  civilisation  in 
Europe    is  unimprovable,   though   partly  countenanced 


THE  ORIENTAL  CIVILISATIONS  429 

by  despondent  thinkers  even  among  the  enhghtened 
Turks/  has  no  justification  in  social  science  ;  and 
though  Turkish  freethinking  has  not  in  general  passed 
the  theistic  stage,-  and  its  spread  is  grievously  hindered 
by  the  national  religiosity,^  which  the  age-long  hostility 
of  the  Christian  States  so  much  tends  to  intensify,  a 
gradual  improvement  in  the  educational  and  political 
conditions  would  suffice  to  evolve  it,  according  to  the 
observed  laws  of  all  civilisation.  It  maybe  that  a  result 
of  the  rationalistic  evolution  in  the  other  European 
States  will  be  to  make  them  intelligently  friendly  to  such 
a  process,  where  at  present  they  are  either  piously 
malevolent  towards  the  rival  creed  or  merely  self-seeking 
as  against  each  other's  influence  on  Turkish  destinies. 
In  any  case,  it  cannot  seriously  be  pretended  that  the 
mental  life  of  Christian  Greece  in  modern  times  has 
yielded,  apart  from  services  to  simple  scholarship,  any 
better  result  to  the  world  at  large  than  has  that  of 
Turkey.  Despite  the  political  freedom  of  the  Christian 
State,  there  has  thus  far  occurred  there  no  such  general 
fertilisation  by  the  culture  of  the  rest  of  Europe  as  is 
needed  to  produce  a  new  intellectual  evolution  of  any 
importance.  The  mere  geographical  isolation  of  modern 
Greece  from  the  main  currents  of  European  thought  and 
commerce  is  probably  the  most  retardative  of  her  condi- 
tions ;  and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  it  can  be  countervailed. 
Italy,  in  comparison,  is  pulsating  with  original  life, 
industrial  and  intellectual.  But,  given  a  renascence  of 
Mohammedan  civilisation,  the  whole  life  of  the  nearer 
East  may  take  a  new  departure ;  and  in  such  an 
evolution  Greece  would  be  likely  to  share. 

'  See  article  on  "  The  Future  of  Turkey  "  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv, 
April,  1899,  by  "A  Turkish  Official." 

^  Yet,  as  early  as  the  date  of  the  Crimean  War,  it  was  noted  by  an 
observer  that  ''young-  Turkey  makes  profession  of  atheism."  Ubicini, 
La  Turquie  acfue/tc,iSss,  P-'36i.  Cp.  Sir  G.  Campbell,  A  Very  Recent 
Vie~M  of  Turkey,  2nd  ed.  1878,  p.  65.  Vambt^ry  makes  somewhat  lig-ht 
of  such  tendencies  (Z)<?r /5/«;«  im  igten  Jahrhundert,  1875,  pp.  185,  187); 
but  admits  cases  of  atheism  even  among-  mollahs,  as  a  result  of  European 
culture  (p.  loi). 

3  Ubicini  (p.  344),  with  Vambt^ry  and  most  other  observers,  pro- 
nounces the  Turks  the  most  relig-ious  people  in  Europe. 


430  THE  STATE  OF  THOUGHT  IN  THE  NATIONS 


The  general  conclusion,  then,  is  that  the  spirit  of 
freethought,  which  has  survived  and  modified  the  long 
malaria  of  primeval  superstition,  the  systematically 
destructive  aggression  of  the  medieval  Christian  church, 
and  even  the  forces  of  decivilisation  in  most  of  the  more 
backward  communities,  will  be  able  to  survive  the 
economic  pressure  which  in  some  of  the  leading  States 
is  now  its  most  formidable  obstacle.  Unquestionably 
tolerance  is  being  rapidly  extended  ;  and  the  deadly 
stress  of  religious  conviction  which  has  wrought  such 
incalculable  harm  in  political,  social,  and  mental  life  is 
year  by  year  being  lightened.  Perhaps  a  new  danger 
lies  now  in  the  tendency  of  many  who  recognise  the 
economic  side  of  the  case  to  concentrate  their  whole 
effort  on  the  problem  of  social  justice,  and  leave  the 
cause  of  disinterested  truth  to  the  future  :  which  is  as  if, 
in  indignation  at  the  ill-distribution  of  the  heritage  of 
art  among  the  multitude,  one  should  propose  to  suspend 
all  artistry  till  a  new  society  be  established.  But  it 
seems  incredible  that  those  who  are  concerned  to  solve 
the  greatest  of  all  human  problems  should  ever  be  led  in 
the  mass  to  suppose  that  the  solution  can  be  hastened  by 
dropping  from  their  hands  one  of  the  main  instruments 
of  intellectual  discipline  and  moral  enlightenment. 


INDEX 


AbAILARD,  i,  302,  313,  328  sq.,  341 

Abauzil,  ii,  226 

Abbadie,  ii,  208,  228 

Abbas  Effendi,  i,  282 

Abbot,  Archbishop,  ii,  39 

Abdera,  i,  157 

Aben-Ezra,  i,  335 

Abernethy,  ii,  362 

Aboul-ala  el  Marri,  i,  269 

Abraliam  and  Isaac,  i,  loi 

Abraxas,  i,  230 

Abiibacer,  i,  277 

Academy,  the  New,  i,  1S3 

Aconzio,  ii,  4,  14 

Adamites,  the,  i,  431 

Adams,  John,  ii,  319 

George,  ii,  330 

Adamson,    Professor,    cited,   ii,   83 

n.,  115 
Addison,  ii,  J31 
Adler,  FeHx,  ii,  342 
Adonai,  i,  104 
Adonis,  i,  101 

^neas  Sylvius,  i,  356,  427,  431  >i. 
^nesidemus,  i,  177  «.,  186 
Aerius,  i,  244 
^schj-lus,  i,  131-5,  145  n. 
African  tribes,  religion  of,  i,  24  sq., 

29 

unbelief  m,  1,  32,  34,  35 

Ag-athon,  i,  163  n. 
Agni,  cult  of,  i,  46 
"Agnostic,"  use  of  word,  ii,  407 
Agnosticism,  Chines^  i,  82,  83 

Greek,  i,  145,  146,  i6i,  162 

Agobard,  i,  292-3 

Agur,  i,  117 

Ahriman  (Angra  Main}u),  i,  67,  69, 

1 12 
Ahura  Mazda,  i,  65  sq. 
Aikenhead,  ii,  158 
Akbar,  i,  283 
Akerberg,  ii,  350 
Akkadian  religion,  i,  60  sq. 
Alberti,  cited,  ii,  i36«. ,  166,  206,  312 
Albertus    Magnus,    i,    339,    349    n., 

368  ;/.,  406 
of  Saxony,  i,  404 


Albigenses,  i,  317  sq. 
Alciati,  i,  469 
Alexander  VI,  i,  362 

of  Aphrodisias,  i,  367 

Alexandria,  religion  at,  i,  185 

culture  at,  i,  184 

Alfarabi,  i,  274 

Alfieri,  ii,  313 

Algazel,  i,  267,  272,  273,  274 

Algarotli,  ii,  313 

Algeria,  freethought  in,  i,  284 

Ali  Syed,  i,  280  w. 

Alison,  cited,  ii,  229 

Alkaios,  i,  197 

Alkibiades,  i,  159 

Al  Kindi,  i,  274 

Al  Kindy,  i,  266 

Allbutt,"  Professor  T.   C,  cited,  i, 

38,  411  n.  ;   ii,  113  n. 
Allegory,  freethinking,  i,  143 
Allen,  Ethan,  ii,  318  ;;. 
Allix,  ii,  107,  230 
AUsopp,  cited,  ii,  390 
Almoravides  and  Almohades,  i,  276 
Alphabetic  writing,  age  ot\  i,  192 
Alphonso    X    (the    Wise),    i,    341, 
346-7,  382 

II,  i.  381 

of  Naples,  i,  356 

Alsted,  ii,  254  sq. 
Amadeo  de'  Landi,  i,  359 
Amalrich  (Amaury)  of  Bena,  i,  336, 

374 
Ambrose,  i,  236 

Ames,  ii,  90 

Ammianus  Marcellinus,  i,  237-8 

Ammonios  Saccas,  i,  227 

Amos,  i,  104  sq. 

Amsterdam  i,  4  )i.;  ii,  197-8 

Amun,  i,  70 

Anabaptists,  the,  i,  431,453,  470 

Anaita,  i,  68 

Anatomy,  ii,  7 

A 11  ax,  i,  126 

Anaxagoras,    i,    139,    152   sq.,    157, 

161,  168 
Anaximandros,  i,  139,  141 
Anaximenes,  i,  139,  141-2,  152 


431 


432 


INDEX 


Ancestor-worship,  i,  82  I 

Andamanese,  religion    and    ethics 

oi,  i,  94 
Ang-els,  belief  in,  i,  112  ;  ii,  353 
Anglo-Saxons,  i,  115 
Annet,  ii,  146-7,  174,  327 
Anomeans,  the,  i,  247 
Anselm,  St.,  i,  302,  326  sq. 

• of  Laon,  i,  t^t,^,  ?i. 

Anstruther,  ii,  115,  125 
Anthropomorphism,  i,  178 
Anti-clericalism,  i,  53,  289,  309,  312, 

350.  357'  358-9-  371  sq. 
Antisthenes,  i,  179 
Antonines,  the,  i,  208,  216 
Aphrodite,  i,  126 
Apthorp,  ii,  176 

Apistos,  early  use  of  word,  i,  i ,  1 29  ;/. 
Apocalypse,  i,  225  n. 
Apollo,  i,  126,  129 
Apologetics,    Christian,  i,    240,  360 

sq.,  392,  417;  ii,  95-7,  100,  102  sq., 

14c,  179,  180,  230  sq.,  414 
Apostolici,  i,  379-80 
Apotheosis,  imperial,  i,  181-2 
Apuleius,  i,  210  ;  cited,  i,  75 
Aquinas,   Thomas,    i,  337  sq.,   339, 

366,  378,  403 
Arabs,   influence  of,  on   Europe,  i, 
275'  293,  319  sq.,  334,  336,345 

on  negro  life,  i,  284 

civilisation  of,  i,  255,  257,  259, 

274  sq. 

science    of,    i,    265,    267,    275, 

319  sq. 
decadence  ot,    i,    267  sq.,   269 

sq.,  275  sq. 
■ persecution  of,  ii,  56 

Himyarite,  i,  113,  117 

Aranda,  Count,  ii,  314 
Arcadia,  religion  in,  i,  43 
Archelaos,  i,  139,  161 
Archilochos,  i,  125  «.,  143 
Aristarchos,  i,  184 
Aristippos,  i,  179 
Aristo,  i,  181 
Aristophanes,  i,  152,  167 
Aristotle,   i,    165,    i6g  n.,    172    sq.; 

ii,  81-2,  379 
Aristotelianism,    i,    333,    334,     336, 

2,3^  sq.,  344;  ii_,  81 
Arius  and  Arianism,  i,  74,  231  sq. , 

235 
Ark,  the  Hebrew,  i,   100 

Arkesilaos,  i,  183 

Arminianism,  i,  477  ;  ii,  201 

Arnauld,  ii,  186 

Arnold  of  Brescia,  i,  313,  329  n. 

the  legate,  i,  322 


Arnold,  Godfrey,  ii,  267 

Matthew,     ii,     326,    388,    391, 

404 
Arnoldo  of  Villanueva,  i,  383 
Arnoldson,  K.  P.,  ii,  351 
Artemis,  i,  125 
Arts,  effect  of,  on  religion,  i,  95 

affected  by  religion,  i,  343 

Aryabhata,  i,  55 
Aryans,  i,  46  sq. 
Asceticism,  i,  248-251,  308 
Ascham,  ii,  3,  24 
Asgill,  ii,  133 
Ashari,  Al,  i,  267 
Ashtoreths,  i,  80 
Asmodeus,  i,  112 
i  Asoka,  i,  58 
Aspasia,  i,  155-6 
Assassins,  the,  i,  272 
Assyria,  religion  of,  i,  60  sq. ,  J27 
Assyriology,  ii,  360 
Astrology,  i,  410 

assailed  by  Gassendi,  ii,  192 

Astronomy,  Arab,  i,  270,  275 

Hindu,  i,  55 

■ Greek,  i,  140,  148  sq.,  184 

Babylonian,  i,  61,  62,  95,    140, 

'75 

Modern,  ii,  326 

Astruc,  ii,  358 

Asvamedha,  rite  of,  i,  51,  94 
Aszo  y  del  Rio,  ii,  314 
Athanasius,  i,  74 
Athanasianism,  i,  235 
Atheism,  and  atheist,  use  of  words, 
i,  I,  4,  225 

Arab,    i,  255,  258,  263,    264  «., 

279 

Brahmanic,  i,  49  sq. 

Buddhistic,  i,  55,  57 

among  Sikhs,  ii,  428 

in  Phoenicia,  i,  78,  79 

in  Greece,  i,  18.  141,  146,  159, 

161,  179,  180,  188 

at  Rome,  i,  209 

under  Islam,  i,  259  sq.,  269; 

ii,  429  n. 

in  modern  Germany,  i,  455 

in  Poland,  ii,  308 

in  England,  ii,  24,  25,  88,  130, 

142,  157 

in  Scotland,  ii,  159 

in  the   French   Revolution,  ii, 

244  sq. 

rise  ot  modern,  ii,  1 

in  Turkey,  ii,  429  n. 

in  Japan,  ii,  426 

Athenagoras,  i,  225,  232 
Athene,  i,  126 


INDEX 


433 


Athens,  culture  o'i,  i,   135-6,    154-7, 

164-5,  I '^6,  245 
Afheos,  early  use  of  word,  i,  129 
Atomic  theory,  i,  157 
Audra,  ii,  212 
Auerbach,  ii,  397 
Aitfkldruitg,  ii.  274,  290,  292 
Auj^sburtj,  Peace  of,  ii,  49 
Auyustine,  St.,  i,  214,  233  sq.,  239 
Auyuslus,  i,  204  sq.,  210 
Aulus  Gellius,  cited,  i,  197  n. 
Auspices,  Roman,  i,  195 
Austore  d'Orlac,  i,  344  n. 
Australian    aborig-ines,    ethics    and 

relig-ion  of,  i,  94,  98 

freethoui^ht,  ii,  412 

Austria,  freethoug-ht  in,  ii,  305  sq. 

Avempace,  i,  277,  335 

Avenar,  ii,  27 

Averroes  and  Averroism,  i,  277  sq., 

320,    334,    336    sq.,   338   sq.,  348, 

352,  353-4,  359'  367,  370,  381  sq., 

383  sq.,  388-9,  409,  414 
Avicebron,  i,  335 
Avicenna,  i,  274 
Avigfnon,  the  papacy  at,  i,  354  sq. , 

398,  443 
Aztec  religion,  i,  87  sq. 

Baals,  i,  76-77 

Bab  sect,  i,  281  sq. 

Babylon,  religion   of,    i,  44,  66  sq., 

iio-i 12 

freethought  in,  i,  61-4 

science    in,    i,    62-3,    95,    138, 

140,  148,  157 
Bacchic  mysteries,  i,  196,  208 
Bacon,  Francis,  i,  5,  6,  158,  172  «., 

369;  ii,  40,  41  sq.,  60 
■ — -  Roger,  i,  338,  387  sq. 
Baden  Powell,  Rev.,  cited,  ii,  33 
Bagehot,  W. ,  criticised,  ii,  171 
Bahrdt,  ii,  278  sq. 
Bain,    Professor,    ii,    404 ;    quoted, 

i,  169  «.,  173  ;  ii,  118,  403 
Bainham,  i,  473 
Baker,  Sir  S.,  i,  35 
Balfour,  A.  J.,  ii,  413 
Balguy,  ii,  150 
Ball,  John,  i,  392 
Ballance,  ii,  412 
Balzac,  ii,  385 
Bantu,  the,  i,  24 
Ban  van,  i,  445 
Baptism,  i,  289 
Barmekides,  the,  i,  265 
Barrington,  ii,  149 
Barthez,  ii,  226 
Barthogge,  ii,  103 
VOL.   II 


Bartoli,  cited,  i,  372 
Basedow,  ii,  275  sq. 
Basileus,  i,  126 
Basilides,  i,  230 
Bathenians,  the,  i,  264 
Baudelaire,  ii,  385 
Bauer,  A.,  quoted,  i,  156  u. 

Bruno,  ii,  325,  354,  370 

Edgar,  ii,  353 

G.  L.,  ii,  352 

Baume-Desdossat,  ii,  224 

Baur,  F.  C,  ii,    325,    354;   cited,   i, 

454 

Rev.  W.,  cited,  11,  293  n.,  339 

Baxter,  ii,  98-9,  103 

Bayle,    ii,  129,    203   sq.,  328  ;  cited, 

ii,  '9  ^       . 
Beard,  C. ,  cited,  i,  478 
Beausobre,  ii,  225,  303 
Bebel,  August,  ii,  341,  419 

•  Heinrich,  i,  452 

BecCfiria,  ii,  220,  239,  312 

Beethoven,  ii,  306 

Beghards  and  Beguins,  i,  375,  377, 

390,  39S 
B(iha,  i,  282 
Bekkar,  ii,  202 

Belgium,  freethought  in,  ii,  34S 
"Believers  in  Reason,"  ii,  350 
Bellay,  Jean  du,  ii,  8 

Joachim  du,  ii,  12 

Bellman,  ii,  349 

Bel  Merodach,  i,  45,  62,  64 

Benn,    A.,  cited,   i,    140  n.,    141   11., 

173.  174-5,  183  «. 
Bentham,  ii,  325,  375 
Bentley,  ii,  108,  135,  149,  150 

cited,  i,  7  n. 

B^ranger,  ii,  385 
Berault,  ii,  108 
Berengar,  i,  300  sq.,  459 
Bergier,  ii,  230,  231,  it,^ 
Berkeley,  i,  7  «.;  ii,  129,  132,  138  sq., 

145,  168,  231 
Bernard,  St.,  i,  312,  329,  331,  378 
Berquin,  i,  445-6 
Berthelot,  ii,  183 
Berti,  quoted,  ii,  77,  80 
Besant,  Mrs.,  ii,  335-6,  338,  414 
Bettinelli,  ii,  313 
Bevan,  E.  R. ,  cited,  i,  182  n. 
Beverland,  ii,  54 
Beyle,  ii,  385 
Beza,  i,  463  ;  ii,  82 
Bezold,  i,  414,  452,  460 
Biandrata,  i,  435,  441,  469  ;   ii,  4 
Bibliolatry,  i,  457,  469 
Bickell,  i,  1 13 
Biddle,  ii,  94,  1 16 

2F 


434 


INDEX 


Bi^linsky,  ii,  389 

Biology,  ii,  3^6,  365  sq. 

Bion,  i,  180 

Biran,  ii,  372 

Bjornson,  ii,  399 

Black,  A.  S.,  ii,  360 

Black  Death,  i,  32,  351 

Blackmore,  ii,  149 

Blasphem\-,  i,  164,  166,  195;    ii,  92, 

109,  1  26 
Blatchford,  ii,  338 
Bleckly,  H.,  i,  167  ;;. 
Bletterie,  ii,  210 
Blind,  ideas  of  the,  i,  39 
Blount,  ii,  106-7,  I09'  '^9,  150 
Boas,  Professor,  cited,  ii,  32 
Boccaccio,  i,  349  sq. 
Bodin,  i,  i  ;  ii,  12,  379 
Boeheim,  i,  416  n. 
Boethius,  i,  252-3 
Bogfomilians,  the,  i,  291 
Bohemia,  Reformation  in,  i,  427  sq. 
Boileau,  ii,  183 
Boissier,  cited,  i,  193 
Boleslav,  i,  437 
Boling-broke,  ii,    141,    155,    170  sq., 

231 
Bolsec,  i,  461,  467 
Bonaventure  Desperiers,  ii,  5  sq. 
Boncerf,  ii,  211 
Boniface,  St.  i,  291-2 
Bonner,  Mrs.,  ii,  338 
Booms,  ii,  203 
Borowski,  cited,  ii,  296,  301 
Bossuet,  ii,  187,  196 

cited,  ii,  185 

Bouchier,  Jean,  i,  474 
Boiigre,  orig;in  of  word,  i,  291 
Bouillier,  cited,  i,  368  n. 
Boulainvilliers,  ii,  208,  222,-,  225 
Boulant^er,  ii,  225 
Boiirdelot,  ii,  307 
Bourget,  ii,  385 
Bourg'eville,  ii,  15 
Bourne,  cited,  ii,  118  n. 
Bouterwek,  cited,  ii,  59 
Boyle,  i,  4  ;  ii,  103,  143 
Boyle  lectures,  ii,  107 
Bradke,  Von,  cited,  i,  48 
Bradford,  Bishop,  ii,  108 
Bradlaugh,  ii,  2,^2,  sq.,  405 
Bradle}-,  J.,  ii,  108 
Brahmanism,  i,  48  sq. 

Dravidian  influence  on,  i,  54  n. 

Brahmo-Somaj  movement,  ii,  428 
Brandes,  G. ,  ii,  399 

E.,  ii,  399 

Braun,  ii,  350 
Breitburgf,  ii,  201  )i. 


Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  i,   2, 

374.  377.  380,  406,  466 
■ Sincere  (of  Purity),  i,  263 

Bohemian,  i,  430 

of  the  Common  Lot,  i,  456 

Bretschneider,  ii,  352 

Brewster,  cited,  ii,  123,   154,  365 

Briconnet,  i,  444 

Brihaspati,  i,  52 

"  Broad  Church,"  ii,  375 

Brougham,  ii,  401  n.,  402  ;/. 

Brown,  ii,  168 

W.,  ii,  361 

Browne,  Sir  T.,  i,  11  ;  ii,  iii 

Bishop,  ii,  129 

Browning,  ii,  326,  388 

quoted,  ii,  222 

Bruneti^re,  ii,  386 

Brunetto  Latini,  i,  348,  398  )i. 

Bnmo,  Giordano,  i,  22,  422  ;;.,  471  ; 

ii,  5,  60,  62  sq.,  361 
Bruy^re,  ii,  193 
Bryce,  cited,  i,  18-19,  311 
Bucer,  i,  468 

Biichner,  ii,  325,  350,  371,  372,  417  n. 
Buckingham,  ii,  107 
Buckle,  i,  14;  ii,    19;  cited,  i,  325; 

ii,  115,    149,  210-2,   217,  234,   241, 

242,  326,  379,  381,  407 
Buddeus,  i,  11 

Buddha,  traditions  of,  i,  54  sq. ,  57 
Buddhism,  i,  54  sq. ,  148 
Budny,  ii,  55 

Buffon.  ii,  211,  232,  236  sq. 
Bulgarians,  i,  290 
Bullen,  cited,  ii,  iii  n. 
Burckhardt,    cited,    i,    133,   351    «., 

357  «•'  420 
Burgers,  ii,  347 
Burghley,  cited,  ii,  3 
Buridan,  i,  404 
Burigny,  ii,  224,  227 
Burke,  ii,  176 
Burnet,  Bishop,  cited,  i,  6,  475  ;  ii, 

94,  310 

Dr.  J.,    cited,    i,    150,    156    «., 

I 89- I go 

Dr.T.,  ii,  119,  124,  153,  15S 

Burns,  ii,  178 

Bury,  A.,  ii,  120 

Busone  da  Gubbio,  i,  350  n. 

Butler,  ii,  145,  155,  sq.,  231 

Byron,  ii,  326,  387 

Byzantium,  civilisation  of,  i,  250  sq. 

freethought  in,  i,  287  sq. 

Cabanis,  ii,  232 
Cselestius,  i,  232 
Caesar,  i,  202  sq. ,  210 


INDEX 


435 


Caird,  E.,  i,  460 

Cairns,  ii,  238,  245  11. 

Calas,  ii,  220 

Calderon,  ii,  58 

Calendar,  reform  of,  i,  472-3 

Callidius,  ii,  51 

Calliniachus,  i,  137  ;;. 

Calovius,  i,  472 

Calvin,  i,  2,448,  457  sq.,  461  ;  ii,  8,  11 

Calvinism,  i,  461  sq.,  477 

Cambyses,  i,  74 

Campanella,  ii,  309 

Campanus,  i,  453 

Cannibalism,  i,  41 

Canti'i,  i,  13  ;  cited,  349 

Cardan,  i,  xv,  349  n. 

Carlile,  ii,  329,  338 

Carlyle,  ii,  326,  368,  391,  401 

Carneades,  i,  183,  187  ii. 

Carnesecchi,  i,  423 

Carpenter,  J.  E. ,  ii,  360 

Carranza,  ii,  63 

Carra,  ii,  226 

Carrol,  ii,  119 

Cartaud,  ii,  212 

Cartesianism,  ii,  113  sq.,  182,  194 

Casaubon,  Isaac,  i,  477 

Meric,  ii,  102 

Casimir  the  Great,  i,  438 
Cassels,  W.  R.,  ii,  357 
Castalio,  i,  461,  467  ;   ii,  14,  15 
Castelnau,  ii,  64 

Castillon,  ii,  225,  226 

Casuistry,  ii,  90 

Caffiari,  i,  308  sq.,  314 

Catherine  the  Great,  ii,  309 

Cavalcanti,  the  two,  i,  347 

Cecco  d'Ascoli,  i,  349 

Celsus,  i,  240  sq. 

Celso,  ii,  15 

Censorship,  Roman,  i,  210 

Cerinthus,  i,  226  n. 

Cerutti,  ii,  226 

Cervantes,  ii,  58 

Cesalpini,  ii,  81  n. 

Chaeremon,  i,  208 

Chaitanya,  ii,  428 

Chalmers,  ii,  376  ;  cited,  i,  84 

Chaloner,  ii,  94 

Chamberlain,  B.  H.,  cited,  ii,  423-4 

Chambers,  R.,  ii,  326,  366 

Chamfort,  ii,  232 

Chandrag'upta,  i,  58 

Channing-,  ii,  344 

Charlemag'ne,  i,  309 

Charles  II,  ii,  89,  99  )i. 

Ill  of  Spain,  ii,  314 

IV  of  Spain,  ii,  314 

V,  i,  410  ;  ii,  49 


Charleton,  W.,  ii,  97 

Charron,  ii,  19  sq. 

Chastellain,  i,  445 

Chateaubriand,  ii,  373,  382  sq. 

Chatelet,  Marquise  du,  ii,  221 

Chatham.     (See  Pitt.) 

Chaucer,  i,  389 

Chaumette,  ii,  249 

Chazars,  the,  i,  308  n. 

ChefFontaines,  ii,  16 

Chelsum,  ii,  176 

Chenier,  A.,  ii,  232 

Cheyne,  Dr.,  ii,  358  «.,  360,  409 

cited,  i,    105  «.,  107,  113,  117; 

ii,  144  «.,  151,  359  }i. 
Chilling-worth,  ii,  115-6 
China,  thought  in,  i,  80  sq. 

evolution  of,  i,  136 

Chivalry  and  religion,  i,  399  sq. 

Cholmeley,  ii,  1^2 

Christian    II    of   Denmark,   ii,   203, 

306 
Christianit}',  theory  of,  i,  19  sq. 

rise  of,  i,  215,  217  sq. 

hostility   of  to  freethought,   i, 


224 


strifes  of,  i,  214 

and  conduct,  i,  19,  20 


Christina,  Queen,  ii,  307 
Chrysostom,  i,  246-7,  250 
Chubb,  ii,  146,  150 
Chuen-Aten,  i,  72  sq. 
Church,  popular  hostility  to,  ii,  91 
Church,  Dean,  cited,  ii,  18  n.,  45  «. 
Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  ii,  334-5 
Cicero,  i,  199  sq. 
Clarke,  ii,  109,  143,  150 

John,  ii,  329 

Clarkson,  ii,  93 

Claudius  of  Turin,  i,  292-3,  316  n. 

of  Savoy,  ii,  3 

Clayton,  Bishop,  ii,  165 

Cleanthes,  i,  181 

Clemens  Alexandrinus,  i,  226,  228 

Romanus,  i,  228 

Clement  IV,  i,  387 

\'II,  i,  418;  ii,  8 

XIV,  ii,  313 

Clergy,  extortion  by,  i,  309,  328 

vice  among,  i,  309,  350,  355 

hostility  to,    i,    289,    309,    312, 

350,  357-9.  371  sq. 
Clifford,  M.,  ii,  105 

Professor,  i,  448  «.;  ii,  404,  406 

Clitomachos,  i,  183 

Clootz,  ii,  226,  249 
Clough,  ii,  326,  388 
Coifi,  i,  36 
Coimbra,  Bishop  of,  ii,  315 


436 


INDEX 


Colbert,  ii,  192 

Cole,  P.,  ii,  26 

Colenso,  i,  35  ;  ii,  325,  350,  359 

Coleridge,  ii,  31,  325-6,  377-8,  387 

Colet,  i,  413  n. 

Colletet,  ii,  183 

Collins,    Anthony,   i,   7,  22  ;  ii,  121, 

123,  134  sq.,  142,  150-1,  168,  202, 

224 
Collis,  cited,  ii,  173  n. 
Columbus,  i,  388 
Combe,  G.  and  A.,  ii,  332,  382 
Comenius,  i,  5 
Comines,  i,  399 
Comparison  of  creeds,  effect   of,  i, 

42,  194 
Comte,   Auguste,   n,  326,  336,  374, 

379.  407 

Charles,  ii,  379  ;  cited,  ii,  251  11. 

Comtism,  ii,  325,  407 
Conches.     (See  William.) 
Condillac,  ii,  232,  236 
Condorcet,  ii,  218,  232,  244  sq.,  328, 

379 
Confucius,  i,  80  sq. 
Connor,  ii,  124 
Conrad,  Joseph,  ii,  392 
Conrad  the  Inquisitor,  i,  324  n. 

of  Waldhausen,  i,  428 

Constance,  Council  of,  i,  355,  429 
Constans,  i,  245  ;/ 
Constant,  i,  31  ;  ii,  385 
Constantine,  i,  236 
Constantine  Copronymus,  i,  290 
Constantius,  i,  237,  245  n. 
Conway,  M.  D.,  ii,  342,  394  «.,  395 

cited,  i,  220  ;/. 

Conybeare,  ii,  149,  150 

F.  C. ,  quoted,  i,  289 

Cooper,  J.  G.,  ii,  174 

Coornhert,  ii,  51  sq. 

Copernicus,  i,  460  ;  ii,  13,  17  «.,  49, 

60  sq. 
Coquereau,  ii,  212 
Coquerel,  ii,  345 
Corelli,  Miss,  ii,  393 
Corneille,  ii,  183 
Cornutus,  i,  188 
Corodi,  ii,  353 
Cosimo  dei  Medici,  i,  361 
Cosmas  Indicopleustes,  i,  246 
Cosmology,    ancient,    i,    61,    77-9, 

139  sq. 
Cotta,  i,  190  sq. 
Cousin,  ii,  372 
Coward,  ii,  133,  143 
Cowell,  Professor,  cited,  i,  270 
Cowper,  ii,  178 


Crai 


124 


Craik,  cited,  ii,  128  n. 

Cramer,  ii,  350 

Cranmer,  i,  474 

Creation,   doctrine   of,    i,  121,  178; 

ii,  Z^2,->  368 
Creator-Gods,  i,  61,  89,  178 
Credulity,  evolution  of,  i,  90 
Creighton,  Bishop,  ii,  414 
Cremonini,  ii,  75 
Cr(^qui,  Madame  de,  ii,  215  n, 
Cromwell,  i,  203  «.;  ii,  89,  94 
Crotus,  i,  452 
Cruelty,  Christian  and  pagan,  i,  251, 

315 
Moslem,  i,  264 

Crusades,  effects  of,  i,  45  n.,  319 

Crusius,  ii,  302 

Cudworth,  4;  ii,  104,  129 

Cuffelaer,  ii,  258 

Culverwel,  ii,  96-7 

Cumberland,  i,  30  ;  ii,  114,  307 

Cuper,  Franz,  ii,  201 

Curtius,  E.,  cited,  i,  125;?.,   126  «., 

129 

Cuvier,  ii,  365 

Cybele,  cult  of,  i,  63 

Cynics,  the,  i,  179 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  ii,  184,  185 

Cyrenaics,  the,  i,  179 

Cyril,  i,  238,  243 

Cyrus,  i,  64,  66 

Czechowicz,  ii,  55 

Daille,  i,  479 

Daillon,  ii,  203 

D'Alembert,  ii,  232,  243,  244,  272 

Damilaville,  ii,  225 

Damiron,  ii,  374 

Damon,  i,  154 

Dandolo,  ii,  313 

Dante,  i,  347'  34^  sq.,  353  n. 

Danton,  ii,  232 

Daoud,  i,  101 

D'Argens,  ii,  224,  225,  272 

D'Argenson,  ii,  216 

Darigrand,  ii,  213 

Darius,  i,  65,  66 

Darmesteter,  cited,  i,  68 

Darwin,  C,  ii,  326,  365  sq.,  404,  406 

E.,  ii,  178,  365 

Darwinism,  early,  ii,  365,  366 

Daudet,  ii,  385 

Daumer,  ii,  354 

D.avid,  King,  i,  loi 

David  of  Dinant,  i,  336,  374 

Davides,  i,  435  ;  ii,  55 

Davids,  Rhys,  cited,  i,  53  «.,  57 

Davidson,  J.,  ii,  388 

Davies,  J.  C,  ii,  175 


INDEX 


437 


Davies,  Archbishop,  ii,  io8 

Sir  John,  ii,  ^)i 

Davis,  ii,  176 

Deaf-mutes,  beliefs  of,  i,  39 

Decameron,  The,  i,  350  sq. 

Decharme,  i,  13 

Deffand,  Madame  du,  ii,  215  n. 

Deg'eneration  in  relij^ion,  i,  91  sq. 

Deification,  i,  205,  207 

"Deism"  and  "deist, "use  of  words, 

i,  4;  ii,  I,  105 
early  Italian  and  French,  i,  350 

Eng-lish,    ii,    41,    85    sq.,    325, 

2,T>^  sq. 

French,  ii,  215  sq. 

German,  ii,  281  sq. 

American,  ii,  317  sq. 

^"■Ddiste,"  introduction  of  word,  i,  i 
Delamare,  cited,  ii,  205 
Delambre,  ii,  232 

Delmedig-o,  E.  and  J.  S.,  i,  371 
De  Lolme,  ii,  21 1 
Delphi,  oracle  of,  i,  128,  137,  183 
Demetrius  Phalereus,  i,  179 

Poliorketes,  i,  182 

Democracy  and  freethoug-ht,  i,  155, 


160, 


[75,  191  ;   II,  327  sq. 


Demokritos,  i,  139,  157  sq.,  169 

Demonax,  i,  187 

Denk,  i,  453 

Denman,  Lord,  ii,  331 

Dersdon,  ii,  104 

Descartes,    i,   337  n.\  ii,    54,  60,  83 

sq.,  88,  129,  182,  197,  198 
Desdouits,  Professor,  ii,  69  sq. 
Desforges,  ii,  212 
Desgabets,  ii,  195 
Deslandes,  i,  7  ;  ii,  223,  224  ;  cited, 

ii,  igo  II. 
Desmoulins,  ii,  232 
Destutt  de  Tracy,  ii,  232 
Deurhoff,  ii,  202 
Diasforas,  i,  159-160 
Dick,  ii,  364  «. 
Dickens,  ii,  392 
Dickinson,  T.  L. ,  cited,  i,  99 
Diderot,  ii,   2t,2,   235,    239  sq.,   249, 

328  ;  cited,  ii,  172 
Dikaiarchos,  i,  181 
Dillon,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  113,  117 
Diodoros,  cited,  i,  71 
Diog-enes  of  Apollonia,  i.  141  11.,  154 

Laertius,  i,  142 

■  the  Babylonian,  i,  181  ;/. 

Dionysios,  the  younger,  i,  170  n. 

the  Areopagite,  i,  231  >t. 

Dionysos,  i,  126,  128,  136,  143 

Diopeithes,  i,  154 

Dippel,  J.  Conrad,  ii,  265  sq. 


Dissent,    English,  and   Liberalism, 

ii,  326 
Dissenters'  Chapels  Act,  ii,  334 
Divination,  i,  247 
Dixon,  Professor,  cited,  ii,  424-5 
Doddridge,  ii,  149 
Dodwell,  senr. ,  ii,  133,  143 

^  junr.,  ii,  147 

Dolcino,  i,  379 
Dolet,  i,  22;  ii,  5,  8,  9 
Dominic,  St.,  i,  375,  383 
Dominicans,  i,  375-6,  384,  385  ;  ii,  62 
Domitian,  i,  21  t 
Domitius,  i,  202  w. 
Dostoyevsky,  ii,  398 
Douglas,  S.  A.,  ii,  408 
Douglass,  Frederick,  ii,  408 
Dove,  Dr.  John,  ii,  39 

J-,  ii.  174 

Drama,  freethought  in,  i,  135 

Draper,  i,  13  ;  ii,  379,407 

Driver,  Canon,  ii,  359  ;  cited,  i,  106, 

"3  .. 
Droz,  ii,  246 

Drummond,  H.,  ii,  406,  413 
Dryden,  ii,  174 

Dualism,  i,  67,  114,  149,  169,  289 
Ducket,  ii,  144 
Duclos,  ii,  212 
Dudgeon,  ii,  160  sq. ,  174 
Duels,  veto  on,  i,  293  n. 
Diilaurens,  ii,  225 
Dumarsais,  ii,  225,  227 
Dunbar,  W. ,  quoted,  ii,  159,  160 
Duni,  ii,  31 1 

Duns  Scotus,  i,  337-8,  378,  402,  403 
Dupuis,  ii,  232,  244,  336,  381 
Durand,  i,  403 
Durkheim,  ii,  326,  380 
Duvernet,  ii,  211,  226 

Earthquakes,  i,  288 

Eberhard,  ii,  274,  276 

Ebionites,  i,  226 

Eccles tastes,  i,  i  12  sq.,  1 16-7 

Eckhart,  i,  406 

Economic  causation,  i,  t,;^,  37,  38, 
59.  72,  85,  205,  236  sq.,  297  sq., 
308  sq.,  354,  356,  369,  372,  375  sq., 
382  sq.,  384,413  sq.,430  sq.,434; 
ii,  34,  50.  13'.  209,  306,  327,  347, 
406,  409  sq. 

Ecphantos,  i,  149 

Edelmann,  ii,  266  sq. 

Edersheim,  cited,  i,  121 

Edgeworth,  Miss,  ii,  392 

Education  and  Protestantism,  i,  456 

in  England  in  eighteenth  cen- 


tury, n,  173 


438 


INDEX 


Edwards,  T. ,  cited,  ii,  94 

Jonathan,  ii,  356,  379 

John,  ii,  108,  119 

Egypt,  ancient,  rehg^ion  of,  i,  69  sq. 

freethought  in,  i,  1 10 

influence  of  on  Greece,  i,  123, 

131-2 

modern,  i,  25,  282-3 


Eichhorn,  ii,  352,  358 

d'Eichthal,  ii,  358 

Eleatic  School,  i,  139,  144-6 

Eleusinian  mysteries,  i,  179??. 

Elias,  i,  376 

Eliezer,  Rabbi,  i,  334 

Elijah  and  Elisha,  i,  loi 

■ Rabbi,  ii,  421 

Eliot,  George,  ii,  357,  392,  414 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  ii,  25 

St.,  i,  324  n. 

Elohini,  i,  97,  104 
Ellis,  C,  ii,  108 
Ehvall,  ii,  138,  207 
Emerson,  ii,  325,  344,  378,  391,  394 
Emes,  ii,  108 
Emin,  Khalif,  i,  265 
Empedokles,  i,  158-9 
Encyclopedic,  ii,  220,  241 
England,  medieval,  freethought  in, 
i.  297,  315-316,  387  sq. 

Tudor,freethought  in,i,  473  sq. 

Reformation  in,  i,  449,  473  sq.  ; 


Erdmann,  cited,  i,  332,  387-8 

Erhard,  ii,  301 

Erigena.     (See  John  Scotus. ) 

Esoteric  religion,  i,  71 

Esprit  fort,  use  of  term,  ii,  171 

Essays  and  Revieivs,  ii,  325 

Essenes,  i,  148 

Essex,  Earl  of,  ii,  23 

Est^ve,  P.,  ii,  224 

Estienne,  ii,  14 

"Ethical    Culture"    movement,    ii, 

347 
Ethical  Societies,  ii,  342,  410 
Ethics,  progress  in,  i,  135,  180 

of  Chinese,  i,  82  sq. 

■ of  Greeks,  i,  129,  135 

of  Hebrews,  i,  97  sq. ,  no  sq., 

121,  122 
of  primitive  peoples,  i,  28,  87, 


II,  23  sq. 
seventeenth 


century. 


thought  in,  ii,  85  sq. 

eighteenth         century, 

thought  in,  ii,  126  sq. 

nineteenth         century, 

thought   in,  327  sq.,  342,  356  sq., 
375  sq.,  386  sq.,  400  sq. 


free- 
free- 
free- 


arrest  of  culture  in,  ii,  173,  179 
social    conditions    in,    ii,    169, 

173,  400  sq. 
English    influence    on    France,    ii, 

210,  216 

Germany,  ii,  269 

Ennius,  i,  193,  194  sq. 
Enrique  IV,  i,  384 
Ephesos,  i,  125 
Ephoros,  i,  176 
Epic,  rise  of,  i,  128 
Epicharmos,  i,  152,  196 
Epictetus,  i,  185-6,  209-210,  214 
Epicurus,  i,  176  sq.,  179,  182 
Epicureanism,  i,  118,  I76sq.,  I79«. , 

182,    185,    199  sq.,  306,  346,  347, 

356 
Erasmus,  1,  413,  425,  446,  459,  463 
Erastianism,  ii,  87  n. 
Eratosthenes,  i,  184 


92-3 

Etruscan  religion,  i,  195-6 

Eucharist,    doctrine   of  the,  i,   296, 

300  sq.,  312,  419,  435 
Euchite  heresy,  i,  289  «.,  310 
Euclides,  i,  180,  294 
Eudemus,  i,  141 
Eudo,  i,  313 
Eugenius  IV,  i,  357 
Euler,  ii,  270 
Eunomians,  i,  247 
Euripides,  i,  159,  161-4,  196 
Evanson,  ii,  174 
Evelyn,  cited,  ii,  146 
Evemeros,  i,  78,  181,  195-6 
Evemerism  among  Semites,  i,  78 

Christians,  i,  225  sq. 

Romans,  i,  195-6 

Everlasting  Gospel,  the,  i,  377  sq. , 

398,  420 
Evolution  theory,  ii,  326,  365,  377 
Ewald,  ii,  358 
Ewerbeck,  ii,  354 
Exeter,  ii,  3 
Eye,  S. ,  ii,  108 

Fabricr's,  i,  I  I 

Fairbanks,  i,  139  n. 

Falkland,  ii,  115 

"  Famih'  of  Love,"  ii,  25 

Faraday,  ii,  406 

Farel,  i;  444 

Farinata  degli  Uberti,  i,  347 

Farrar,   A.    S.,   i,    14-15;    cited,    i, 

341  «.;  ii,  151 
Fathers,  the  Christian,  i,  226 
Faye,  La,  ii,  64 
Fear  in  religion,  i,  207-8,  351 
Feargal,  i,  291,  358 
Federation,  i,  140 


INDEX 


439 


F^nelon,  i,  497  ;  ii,  208 

Ferdinand,  King',  i,  384 

Ferg-uson,  ii,  163 

Ferini  a.\\i\  Aiitifcrini,  ii,  311 

Ferri,  ii,  380 

Fetisliism,  i,  34 

Feuerbach,  ii,  325,  354,  370,  371 

Fichte,  ii,  300,  303  sq.,  369 

Fiji,  unbelief  in,  '\,  2)2,  "•>4t 

-^ —  reliofion  in,  i,  34-35,  41 

Filang-ieri,  ii,  313 

Finetti,  ii,  311 

Finlay,  quoted,  i,  288  «. 

Finow,  i,  36 

Firdausi,  i,  270 

Firmin,  ii,  123 

Fisher,  Dr.  L. ,  quoted,  i,  47 

Kuno,  quoted,  ii,  84 

Fitzg-erald,  i,  270-1 

Flade,  ii,  51 

Flagellants,  i,  378 

Flanders,  civilisation  of,  i,  312-3 

Flaubert,  ii,  385 

Fletcher,  ii,  37 

Flint,  Professor,  cited,  ii,  53,  310 

Florence,     culture     of,    i,    306,   361 

FoE^g's  Weekly  Journal,   quoted,   ii, 

136 
Fontane,  cited,  i,  48 
Fontanier,  ii,  183 
Fontenelle,  ii,  194,  212 
Foote,  G.  W.,  ii,  334,  338,  405 
Forbes,  Lord  President,  ii,  114,  162 
Forchhammer,  i,  167  >i. 
Foster,  ii,  149 
Fotherby,  Bishop,  ii,  40-1 
Founders,  religfious,  i,  68 
Fourier,  ii,  336 

Prowler,  Dr.,  cited,  ii,  115,  121  n. 
Fox,  W.  J.,  ii,  342 
France,  early  freethought  in,  i,  306 

sq-  3I5-  326  sq.,  396  sq. 

Reformation  in,  i,  442  sq. 

influence  of,   on   Germany,   ii, 

269 


Franklin,  B. ,  ii,  317  sq. 
Fmticelli,  the,  i,  336,  376-80 
Fraud  in  relig'ion,  i,  27  sq.,  109,  248 
Frazer,  J.  G.,  ii,  381 
I-'rederick    II,     Emperor,     i,      336, 
344  «.,  384 

of  Aragon,  i,  383 

the  Great,  ii,  220,  252,  271  sq., 


influence     of,     on      Italy,     i, 
396-7  «.  ;    ii,  312 

freethoughl  in,  ii,  529,  181  sq., 


336,  372  sq.,  384  sq. 

culture-history  of,  i,   326  sq. , 

396  sq.,  443  sq.;  ii,  S  sq.,210  sq., 

237  sq- 

Francis,  King-,  i,  443,  447 
Francis  of  Assisi,  i,  375 
Franciscans,  i,  375  sq.,  398 
Franck,  Sebastian,  i,  461 
Francois  de  Rues,  i,  373 
Francklin,  T. ,  ii,  156 


286.  325 
\\  illiam,  ii 


287 


Free  Church  of  Scotland,  ii,  410  sq. 
Freeke,  ii,  123  n. 
Freeman,  cited,  i,  269 
Freemasonry,  i,  401-2  ;  ii,  336 
"  Free   religious"  societies,  ii,  340, 

342-3 
Freescekers,  sect  of,  6 

Free  Spirit.     (See  Brethren.) 

•' Freethinker,"  origin  of  word,  i,  i, 

4,  6  sq. 

meaning  of  word,  i,  4  sq. ,  8  sq. 

Freethinker,  early  journal,  i,  7 
Freethought,  meaning  of,  i,  i  sq. 

and  conduct,  i,  21 

continuity  of,  i,  35  sq.,  45  sq., 

48  sq. ,  410  sq. 

histories  of,  i,  10  sq. 

psychology  of,  i,  8  sq. ,  16  sq. 

resistance  to,  i,  24  sq. 

in  religion,  i,  j,^,  n. 


—  prnnitive,  1,  7,2,^  115 

—  early  Arab,  i,  113,  117 

—  Babylonian,  i,  61-64 

—  Chinese,  i,  80  sq. 

—  Christian,  i,  217  sq. 

—  Egyptian,  i,  70  sq. 

—  Greek,  i,  129  sq.,  138  sq. 

—  Hebrew,  i,  96,  115,  1 14-120 

—  Hindu,  i,  47  sq. 

—  in  medieval  schools,  i,  293  sq. 

—  in  the  Renaissance,  i,  343  sq. 

—  in   Tudor  England,   i,  473  sq. ; 
ii,  23  sq. 

—  in  Austria,  ii,  305 

—  in  France  in  the  i6th  and  17th 
centuries  ii,  5  sq. ,  181  sq. 

—  in  France  in  the  i8th  century, 
207  sq. 

in  France  in  the  19th  century, 
336,  372  sq.,  384  sq. 
in  England  in  the  17th  centurv, 
85  sq. 

in  England  in  the  i8th  century, 
126  sq. 

in  England  in  the  19th  century, 
327  sq- '  356  sq. ,  375  sq. ,  386  sq. , 

400  sq. 

—  in  Germany,  ii,  51,  254  sq.,  33S 
sq.,  352  sq.,  395  sq.,  417  sq. 


440 


INDEX 


Freethought  in   Holland,  i,  407  sq. ; 
ii,  51   sq.,  197  sq.,  347 

in  Italy,  u,  309  sq.,  395 

in  Spain,  i,  381  sq.  ;  ii,  337,  348 

in  Switzerland,  ii,  315,  346,  348 

in  Russia  and  Scandinavia,  ii, 

306,  349,  398,  419  sq. 
in  South  Africa,  ii,  347 

in  the  United  States,  ii,3i7sq. , 

336,  407 

in   Catholic   countries   to-day, 

''.  337'  345.  348-9^  414  sq- 

in  the  Catholic  Church,  ii,  345 

in   Oriental    countries  to-day, 

ii,  422  sq. 

Phoenician,  i,  73  sq. 

psycholog'y  of,  i,  8  sq.,  16  sq. 

Roman,  i,  192  sq.,  207 

under  Islam,  i,  254  sq. ,  350 

Free-will,  doctrine  of,  i,  8 
Frei-geisti  use  of  word,  ii,  263 
Freret,  ii,  210,  225,  227 
P'resno}',  L.  du,  ii,  211 

"  Friends  of  Light,"  ii,  339 
Froissart,  i,  399 
Fromman,  ii,  259 
Fronto,  i,  239 
Froude,  i,  3  ;;.;  ii,  401 
Fry,  ii,  119 
Fuegfians,  i,  94 
Fukuzawa,  ii,  423,  425 
Fuller,  cited,  ii,  180 
Furnival,  F.  J.,  cited,  ii,  36 

Gabler,  ii,  352 

Gabriele  de  Salo,  i,  359 

Gaetano  of  Siena,  i,  359 

Galen,  ii,  7 

Galeotto  Marcio,  i,  359 

Galiani,  ii,  313 

Galileo,    i,    369,    411,    471  ;    ii,    60, 

74  sq-.  310 

Gall  and  Spurzheim,  ii,  382 

Galvani,  ii,  313 

Garasse,  ii,  19  n.,  21  sq. 

Garcilasso,  cited,  i,  89 

Gardiner,  cited,  i,  415  ;   ii,  39,  40 

Garibaldi,  ii,  415 

Garlon,  ii,  212 

Gassendi,  ii,  60,  83,  1 14,  130,  190  sq. 

Gastrell,  ii,  108 

Gaul,  Christian,   freethought   in,    i, 

vice  in,  i,  250 

Gaunilo,  i,  327 

Gaussen,  ii,  362 

Gautama.     (See  Buddha.) 

Gazier,  ii,  384  n. 

Gazzali,  i,  267,  272,  273,  274 


Gebhardt,  ii,  272 
Gebhart,  discussed,  i,  420 
Gebler,  criticised,  ii,  76-7 
Geddes,  Dr.,  ii,  359 
Geg-enbauer,  Theophilus,  ii,  256 
Geijer,  ii,  349  ;  cited,  ii,  307 
Gemistos  Flethon,  i,  361 
Gi^nard,  ii,  212,  224. 
Genesis,  criticism  of,  i,  463 
Geneva,  thought  in,  i,  468 
Gennadios,  i,  361 
Genovesi,  ii,  313 
Gentilis,  V'alentinus,  i,  469 
Geoffrand,  Madame,  ii,  215  n. 
Geology,  ii,  326,  363  sq. 
Georgios  Trapezuntios,  i,  361 
Gerbert,  i,  319  n. 
Gerhard,  Bishop,  i,  307 
Germany,  religion  in,  ii,  355 
Reformation    in,     i,    413    sq., 

452  sq- 

treethought  in,  i,  405;  ii,  254sq. , 


338  sq.,  352  sq.,  395  sq.,  417  sq. 
Gerson,  i,  407 
Geulincx,  ii,  203 
GeTvissener,  ii,  256 
Ghailan  of  Damascus,  i,  260 
Ghibellines,  i,  347 
GhiUany,  ii,  353,  381 
Giannone,  ii,  312,  313 
Gibbon,  i,  176  n.;  ii,  150,  175  sq. 
Gibson,  Bishop,  ii,  137,  149,  150 
Giddings,  ii,  326,  380 
Gilbert,  i,  471 

Claude,  ii,  223 

Gildon,  ii,  109,  145-6 

Giorgio  di  Xovara,  i,  359 

Girard,  i,  133,  164 

Gladiatorial  games,  i,  251 

Gladstone,  i,  1997/.;  ii,  338 

Glanvill,  ii,  1 13,  203 

Glisson,  ii,  113 

Gnosticism,  i,  227  sq. 

Go,  the  chief,  i,  36 

Gobel,  ii,  249 

God-idea,  evolution  of,  i,  194,  326 

Godwin,  ii,  389 

Goethe,  ii,  290  sq. ,  365 

cited,  ii,  269,  270,  271,  282 

Gogol,  ii,  398 
Goguet,  ii,  379 
Golden  Rule,  i,  83-4 
Goldsmith,  ii,  170 
Goliards,  i,  318,  348,  373 
Gomates,  i,  67 
Goncourt,  de,  ii,  385 
Goniondzki,  i,  440-1 
Good,  Dr.  T. ,  ii,  103 
Goodman,  ii,  108 


INDEX 


441 


Gordon,  T. ,  ii,  174 

Gors^ias,  i,  165 

Gorky,  ii,  399 

Gorlceiis,  ii,  53 

Gospels,  freethoiig'ht  in,  i,  217  sq. 

Gostvvick,  cited,  ii,  271 

Gottsciialk,  i,  294  sq. 

Gouvest,  ii,  224 

Granovsky,  ii,  398 

Grant,  Sir  A.,  i,  173  n. 

General,  ii,  408 

Grapius,  ii,  259 
Grassi,  ii,  77 
Gray,  cited,  ii,  169 
Greef,  de,  ii,  380 
Greek  civilisation,  i, 
relig-ion,  i,  99,  1 

155,  178,  185,  193 

influence  in  India,  i,  55 

influence  on  Jews,  i,  118 

Rome,  i,  192,  194  sq. 

Saracens,  i,  262,  264 

Green,  J.  R.,    cited,   i,  413  «.,  476; 

ii.  25  «.,  35 


122  sq.,  136  sq. 
24  sq.,  I37sq., 


criticised,  ii,  61-2 

T.  H.,ii,  377 

Greene,  ii,  28 
Greg",  W.  R.,  ii,  325,  357 
Gr^g'oire,  ii,  247 
Gregorovius,  cited,  i,  364  n. 
Gregory  V'll,  i,  311 

IX,  i,  324,  344  sq.,  354,  366 

XIII,  i,  472 

Greissingf,  ii,  259 

Greville,  ii,  38 

Gribaldo,  i,  469 

Griffis,  cited,  ii,  424 

Grimm,  cited,  i,  37 

Gringoire,  i,  443  ;  ii,  6 

Grosley,  ii,  212 

Grosstete,  Robert,  i,  340,  3S7,  391 

Grote,   ii,  376  ;  quoted,  i,    135,  143, 

167  n. 
Grotius,  i,  477  ;   ii,  53,  311 
Gruet,  Jacques,  i,  461,  465  sq. 
Gruppe,  i,  39 
Guardati,  i,  357 
Gubernatis,  ii,  415 
Gueudeville,  ii,  223 
Guibert,  ii,  212 

de  Nog^ent,  i,  306 

Guicciardini,  i,  366 
Guirlando,  ii,  4 

Guizot,  ii,  379,  384  ;  cited,  i,  448 
Gulick,  cited,  ii,  425-6 
Gumplowicz,  ii,  380 
Gustavus  Vasa,  ii,  306 
Gutschmid,  cited,  i,  69 
Guyau,  ii,  380 


Hadi,  Khalif,  i,  264 

Haeckel,  ii,  368 

Hafiz,  i,  272 

Hagenbach,  i,  13;  ii,  271  «.,  292 

Hahn,  i,   13 

Haig-h,  cited,  i,  133,  162  «.,  164 

Hale,  ii,  153 

Hall,  Robert,  ii,  392 

Hallam,  cited,  i,  356  «.,  360  ;  ii,  96 

Halle,  university  of,  ii,  262 

Haller,  Von,  ii,  270  sq. 

Halley,  ii,  130,  150 

Halyburton,  ii,  159;  cited,  ii,  142  n. 

Hamann,  ii,  302 

Hamilton,  ii,  376 

Hammurabi,  i,  60 

Hamond,  ii,  26 

Hampden,    Dr.,    quoted,  i,    230    «., 

305.  3-29  «• 
Hancock,  ii,  109 
Hanyfisiii,  i,  255  sq. 
Hanj^fites,  the,  i,  255  //. 
Hardy,  ii,  392 
Harnack,  cited,  i,  233  n. 
Haroun  Alraschid,  i,  264 
Harrington,  ii,  95 
Harriott,  i,  471  ;  ii,  31-2 
Harris,  ii,  108 
Harrison,  F. ,  i,  331  >i. 
Hartley,  ii,  375 
Hartniann,  ii,  370 
Harvey,  ii,  47 

Gabriel,  ii,  28 

Haslam,  ii,  331 

Hassall,  cited,  ii,  171 

Hassan,  i,  272 

Hatch,  quoted,  i,  169  «.,  22S  n. 

Hattem,  P.  van,  ii,  202 

Havet,  i,  108-9  ;  ii'  o^S'  358 

Hawaii,  freethought  in,  i,  35 

Hawkins,  B. ,  quoted,  ii,  402 

Hawthorne,  ii,  394 

Haynes,  E.  S.  P.,  i,   14,  299 

Hazlitt,  ii,  389 

Ht^bert,  ii,  249 

Hebrews,  religfion  and   ethics  of,   i, 

96  sq. 

mythology  of,  i,  loi  sq. 

— —freethought  among,  i,  ii2  sq. 
Hegel,  i,  12  ;   ii,  303,   305,  325,  369, 

370.  378 
Heine,  ii,  326,  370,395  sq.;   quoted, 

ii,  285 

Heiric,  i,  337  m. 

Hekataios,  i,  142,  146-7 

Helchitsky,  i,  432 

Helena,  i,  130 

Helvt^tius,  ii,  232,  238  sq.,  244,  328 

^  Hemming,  ii,  27 


442 


INDEX 


Henley,  ii,  389 
Hennell,  C.  C. ,  ii,  325,  356 
Hennequin,  ii,  386 
Henotheism,  i,  48 
Henry,  the  monk,  i,  312 
of  Clairvaux,  i,  313 

IV,  of  France,  ii,  20 

Vni,  of  England,  i,  449,  473 

P.    E.,   cited,  i,  462  «.,  466  n., 

467 

Hensel,  i,  472 
Herakleides,  i,  143,  188 
Herakleitos,  i,  139,  142-4 
Herbert   of  Cherbury,  Lord,  ii,4i, 

85  sq.,  109,  150 
Herder,  ii,  289,  379 
Here,  i,  126 
Hermippos,  i,  155 

i,  154  n. 

Hermits,  Hindu,  i,  52 
Hermog'enes,  i,  211 
Hermotimos,  i,  139 
Herodotos,  i,  12^,  127  «.,  1 '52,    147, 

156 
Hesiod,  1,  126-8,  130,  137,  144,  151 
Hetherington,  ii,  331 
Hetzer,  i,  453 
Heyse,  ii,  397 
Hibbert,  Julian,  ii,  243  n. 
Hicksites,  the,  ii,  2>^t, 
Hiero,  i,  152 
Hierocles,  i,  240 


1 1. 


'57'    326, 


Hierologfv,  ii,  8;, 

380 

Hieronymos,  i,  154  ii. 
Hiy^s^inson,  Colonel  T.  W. ,  ii,  395 
Hig'h  Priests,  i,  112 
Hiketas.     (See  Iketas. ) 
Hildebrand,  i,  311 
Hillel,  i,  120,  217 
Hilton,  ii,  27 
Hincmar,  i,  294,  297 
Hinduism,  i,  64  sq. 
Hipparchia,  i,  180  71. 
Hipparchos,  i,  184,  208 
Hippias,  i,  165 
Hippo,  i,  141 

Hippokrates,  i,  166,  175  ;   ii,  7 
Hittites,  i,  138 
Hobbes,  ii,  87  sq.,  150 
Hoffding-,    Professor,    criticised,  ii, 

•.51 
d'Holbach,   ii,    zi-^i,   225,    266, 

232,  243  sq.,  328 
Holcroft,  ii,  389 
Holland.     (See  Netherlands.) 

G.  J.,  ii,  231 

Holm,  cited,  i,  156  n. 
Holmes,  O.  W. ,  ii,  395 


^2,^^ 


"  Holy,"  early  meaning;  of,  i,  103 
Holyoake,  G.  J.,  ii,  330  332,  338 
Home,  H.     (See  Karnes.) 

John,  ii,  164 

Homer,  i,    124-5,    128  sq.,  137,  143, 

i5i>  193 
Homeric  poems,  i,  128  sq.,  144 
Hone,  ii,  330 
Honorius  of  Autun,  i,  330 
Hooker,  i,  394  ;  ii,  33-4 

cited,  i,  3 

Hooper,  i,  474 

Horace,  i,  206,  213 

Hosea,  i,  104  sq. 

Hosius,  i,  442 

Houston,  ii,  323,  328-9 

Howe,  ii,  98,  105 

Howells,  ii,  394 

Huard,  ii,  209,  224 

Huber,  Marie,  ii,  210 

Huet,  ii,  188  sq. 

Hug-o,  Victor,  ii,  326,  385 

Hull,  John,  ii,  38 

Humanists,  Italian,  i,  355  sq. ,  369  sq. 

Hume,  i,  201  ;   ii,    150,  155,  156  sq., 

168,   170;   cited,  ii,   169,  376,  379 
Hiiniiliati,  i,  376 
Hung-ary,  thought  in,  i,  435 


Reformation  in,  i,  433  sq. 


Hunt,  Leigh,  ii,  389,  390 
Hurst,  Bishop,  i,  5,  14 

cited,  ii,  254,  280,  283,  289  n. 

Huss,  i,  304,  355,  427  sq. 
Hutcheson,  F.,  ii,  160  sq.,  168 
Hutchinson,  Mrs.,  cited,  ii,  92 

J.,  ii,  130,  162 

Roger,  i,  473-4 

Huttman,  ii,  328 
Hutton,  ii,  178,  363 
Huxley,  ii,  338,  367,  404,  406 
Huysmans,  ii,  385 
Hygiainon,  i,  163  )i. 
Hyksos,  the,  i,  73 

IBN  Ezra,  i,  335 
Ibn  Gebriol,  i,  335 
Ibn  Khaldun,  i,  279 
Ibsen,  ii,  399 
Iconoclasm,  i,  287  sq. 
Idolatry,  i,  62 

early  opposition  to,  i,  62-3 

Christian,  i,  287  sq.,  290  n. 

Ignell,  ii,  350 
Iketas,  i,  149 
Ilgen,  ii,  358 
Hive,  J.,  ii,  174 
Imitatio  Christi,  i,  407 
Immortality,  belief  in,   i,  98-9,  114, 
119 


INDEX 


443 


Immortality,  denial  of,  i,  53,  117-8, 

338-9.  347.  367.  404.440  rii.93.  214 

ofiinimals,  ii,  270,  275 

Impostors,  the  Three,  i,  26,  344  sq. 

Incas,  nitionalislic,  i,  90 

Index  Expurgatoriits,  i,  424  ;  ii,   18, 

76,  191,  234,  313,  80 
India,  freethoug-ht  in,  ii,  427  sq. 

mag-ic  in,  i,  43 

religious  evolution  in,  i,  46  sq.  ; 

ii,  427  sq. 
Indra,  cult  of,  i,  47 
Indulgences,  i,  321,  355 
Industrialism,  ii,  169 
Infanticide,  Arab,  i,  260 
"  Infidel,"  use  of  word,  i,  3,  8,  259 
"  Infidelity,"  use  of  word,  i,  3,  4,  8 ; 

ii,  126 
Ing-elo,  ii,  102-3 
Ingersoll,  ii,  336,  350,  405 
Innocent  III,  i,  317-323 

I\',  i,  342 

VIII,  1,362 

Inquisition,  the,  i,  317,  321,  325, 
340,  348,  356,  358  sq.,  366,  381, 
382  sq.,  384,  398,  419,  438  ;  ii,  4, 
57;  59.  66,  68,  74,  314 

Institutions,  power  of,  in   religion, 

•.  ?<2>^  38 

lack  of  rationalist,  i,  2,2>^  38 

Intolerance,  Greek,  i,  154,  156  sq., 

171,  179,  182,  189-190 
Christian,  i,  226,  235,  237.   (See 

Persecution.) 
Ionia,  culture  of,  i,  122  sq. ,  136  sq. , 

'75 
Ireland,  ancient,  culture  in,  i,  293-4 

Protestantism  in,  i,  450 

freethought  in,  ii,  164 

Irenaeus,  i,  235 

Isabella,  i,  384 

Isaiah,  i,  105,  106,  108 

Isenbiehl,  ii,  286 

Isis,  cult  of,  i,  75 

Islam,  i,  254  sq.,  350 

Ismailites,  the,  i,  264,  272 

Israel,    relative    freethought    in,    i, 

96  sq. 
Itah',     freethought    in,   i,    343    sq. , 

419  n.  ;   11,309  sq.,  395 
influence  of,  o\\  Europe,  ii,  i  sq. 

Reformation  in,  i,  417  sq. 

ly^yasu,  ii,  426 

Jaafer,  i,  265 
Jabarites,  the,  i,  261 
Jacob,  i,  loi 
Jacobeos,  the,  ii,  315 
Jahedians,  the,  i,  273  ;/. 


Jahn,  ii,  305 

Jainism,  i,  56  ;   ii,  428 

Jamblichos,  i,  239 

James,  Professor  W.,  i,  17  n. 

Henry,  ii,  395 

Jami,  i,  272 

Jannis,  P.  de  la,  ii,  212 
Jansenists,  ii,  182,  186,  187,208,235 
Japan,  freethought  in,  ii,  422  sq. 

reform  in,  i,  25 

Jeanne  d'Arc,  i,  394 

Jeannin,  ii,  20 

Jefferies,  R.,  ii,  393 

Jefferson,  ii,  317  sq.,  2<~2> 

Jehovah.     (SeeYahweh.) 

Jenghiz  Khan,  i,  268 

Jerome,  St.,  i,  244 

Jerome  of  Prague,  i,  428,  430 

Jerusalem,  J.  F.  W.,  ii,  268 

Jesuits,  i,  436,  442  ;  ii,  4,  50,  81,  186, 

229  n.,  235,  313 
Jesus,  i,  22 

horoscope  of,  i,  349  n. 

Jevons,  F.  B.,  criticised,  i,  43 
Jews  in   Middle  Agfes,   i,   320,  j^^t^^, 

370-1 
persecutions    of,    i,    381,   386; 

».  57 
modern,  ii,  421-2 

Joachim,  Abbot,  i,  377 

Job,  i,  112  sq.,  116 

Joel,  i,  106 

John  the  Scot,  i,  293  sq.,  304-5,  331, 

336 ;  ii.  378 

of  Gaunt,  i,  391 

of  Jandun,  i,  402 

of  Parma,  i,  378 

of  Salisbury,  i,  327,  ZZ-^  3^6 

Pannonicus,  i,  433 

Pirnensis,  i,  438 

Zapoyla,  i,  434 

Zimisces,  Emperor,  i,  290 

Pope,  XXI,  i,  339  n. 

Pope,  XXIII,  i,  429 

Johnston,  H.  H.,  cited,  i,  284-5 

Johnstone,  John,  ii,  160 

Joinville,  i,  335,  399 

Jolley,  ii,  360 

Jonas  al  Aswari,  i,  260 

Joseph,  myth  of,  i,  loi 

Joseph  II,  ii,  274 

Joshua,  i,  loi 

Jouffroy,  ii,  373 

Journalism,  freethinking,  ii,  337  sq., 

34'.  348.  413 
Jousse,  ii,  212 
Jovinian,  i,  244 
Juan  de  Peratallada,  i,  383 
"Juan  di  Posos,"  ii,  203 


444 


INDEX 


Julian,  i,  185,  242-3 
Jui-ieu,  ii,  205 

Justin  Martyr,  i,  239  sq.,  249 
Juvenal,  i,  120,  209,  223 

Kadarites,  i,  261 

Kalant,  the,  i,  269 

Kalisch,  ii,  359 

Karnes,  Lord,  ii,  163 

Kant,  ii,  289,  293  sq,  361,  369,  379 

Kantsa,  i,  50 

Kapila,  i,  50 

Karaites,  i,  :i2,T„  334  n. 

Karians,  i,  122  sq. 

Karma,  doctrine  of,  i,  56 

Karmathians,  the,  i,  268 

Karneades,  i,  183,  187  ;/. 

Keats,  ii,  388 

Keener,  Bishop,  ii,  408 

Kepler,  i,  471  ;  ii,  83 

Kett,  ii,  26,  31,  32 

Ketzer,  orig-in  of  word,  i,  308 

Kharejites,  the,  i,  261 

Kharvakas,  the,  i,  51 

Kidd,  B.,  ii,  413 

Kidder,  ii,  108 

Kiellgren,  ii,  349 

Kierkegaard,  ii,  399 

Kindi,  Al,  i,  274 

Kindy,  Al,  i.  266 

King-,  Archbishop,  ii,  129,  134 

King's,  deification  of,  i,  181-2 

Kipling,  ii,  388 

Kirkup,  cited,  ii,  332  n. 

Kleist,  ii,  395 

Klitomachos,  i,  183 

Knaggs,  ii,  108 

Knight,  ii,  162 

Knutzen,  ii,  256  sq. 

Koerbagh,  ii,  54 

Koheleth,  i,  109,  116-7 

Koran,  the,  i,  256  sq.,  264,  266 

Kortholt,  ii,  258 

Krake,  Rolf,  i,  37 

Krishna  mvth,  i,  55 

Kritias,  i,  160 

Krochmal,  ii,  421 

Kronos,  i,  126 

Kropf,  cited,  i,  36  n. 

Ktesilochos,  i,  164  >i. 

Kuenen,  ii,  325,  359 

Kumarila,  i,  51 

Kuyper,  ii.  201 

Kyd,  ii,  32 

La  Barre,  ii,  220 

Labitte,  cited,  ii,  22 

Labour  churches,  ii,  343 

La  Bruy^re,  ii,  193;  cited,  i,  45  )i. 


Lachares,  i,  183 
Lactantius,  i,  213  «.,  246 
Lagrange,  ii,  232 
La  Harpe,  ii,  211,  227 
Laing-,  cited,  ii,  339  n. 
Lalande,  i,  1 1  ;  ii,  232 
Lamarck,  ii,  365 
Lamartine,  ii,  385 
Lamb,  C,  ii,  389 
Lambert,  Francois,  i,  455 
Lamennais,  ii,  374 
I  La  iMettrie,  ii,  169,  224,  232,  236,  272 
La  iMothe  le  \"ayer,  ii,  22,  181,  182 
Lanjuinais,  ii,  211 
La  Peyr^re,  ii,  196  sq. 
La  Placette,  i,  479 
Landau,  cited,  i,  350  n. 
Lane,  cited,  i,  25,  283 
Lang,  A.,  criticised,    i,    42,   89,    93, 

98-9  ;  cited,  i,  35 
Lange,   cited,   i,    10,  137,    173,    175; 

ii,  240 
Langland,  i,  389 

Languedoc,  civilisation  in,  i,  317  sq. 
Lanson,  cited,  ii,  185,  194,  221,  234 
Lao-Tsze,  i,  80,  82  sq. 
Laplace,  ii,  232,  326,  361 
La  Primaudaye,  ii,  27 
Lardner,  ii,  149,  343 
La  Rochette,  ii,  220 
Larroque,  ii,  358 
Lassen,  ii,  258 
Lasson,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  407 
Latini,  Brunetto,  i,  348,  398  n. 
Latitudinarians,  ii,  124 
Lau,  ii,  265  sq. 
Lavater,  ii,  276 
Lavergne,  cited,  ii,  247 
Law,  William,  ii,  119,  149,  168 
Lawrence,  Dr.,  ii,  362  sq. 
Lea,  H.  C,  cited,  i,  325 
Lechler,  cited,  i,  13 
Lecky,  i,  14  ;  quoted,  i,  337  «. 

cited,  ii,  36,  165  «.,  179,  232 

Le  Clerc,  i,  478  ;  ii,  91,  107,  129,  201 

Leconte  de  Lisle,  ii,  326,  385 

Lecount,  ii,  332 

Lee,  Dr.,  ii,  368 

Leechman,  ii,  162 

Leenhof,  ii,  203 

Lefivre,  i,  444,  446 

Legate,  ii,  39,  40 

Legge,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  81 

Leibnitz,  ii,  13  n.,  46,  130,  259  sq. 

Leicester,  Lollardry  in,  i,  390 

Leland,  ii,  146,  149 

Lemaitre,  ii,  386 

Lennstrand,  ii,  351 

Lenormant,  cited,  i,  69  n. 


INDEX 


445 


Leo  the  Isaurian,  i,  286-7 

X,  Pope,  i,  368 

Leopardi,  ii,  326,  395 
Leopold  of  Tuscany,  ii,  313 
Leslie,  C,  ii,  107,  134  //.,  149 

Professor,  ii,  362 

Lessing,    i,    350;    ii,    274,    282  sq., 

325-6 
Letourneau,  ii,  380 
Le  Trosne,  ii,  212 
Leufstedt,  ii,  350 
Lcukippos,  i,  139,  157 
Leukothea,  i,  145 
Levallois,  cited,  ii,  386  «. 
Levellers,  the,  ii,  93 
Levi  ben  Gershom,  i,  334 
Levites,  orig"in  of,  i,  44,  112 
Lewes,  G.  H  ,  ii,  338,  404 
Lewis,  ii,  26 
L'Hopital,  ii,  13 
Libanius,  quoted,  i,  237 
Liberfin,  use  of  word,  i,  2 
Libei-fini,    or    "  libertines,"    use    of 

word,  i,  2,  379-80,  466, 473-4 ;  ii,  1 1 

tenets  oi',  i,  466  sq. 

Libraries,  public,  i,  205  71. 

Lidgould,  ii,  108 

Liebknecht,  ii,  341 

Ligfhtfoot,  Bishop,  cited,  i,  148 

Lilienfeld,  ii,  380 

Lilja,  ii,  350 

Lillie,  cited,  i,  53  n. 

Lincoln,  President,  ii,  408 

Linofuet,  ii,  211 

Liszinski,  ii,  308 

Littre,  cited,  i,  398 

death  of,  ii,  416  n. 

Livy,  i,  206 

Llorente,  i,  386  n. 

Localisation  of  Gods,  i,  43  sq. 

Locke,  ii,  108,  116  sq.,  126,  150 

Loescher,  ii,  259 

Logos,  the,  i,  83,  169 

Lokayata,  i,  51,  52 

Lollards,  i,  390,  449 

Long-,  G. ,  cited,  i,  202  ;;.,  203  n. 

Loni^rais,  ii,  226 

Lope  de  Vega,  ii,  58 

Lord's  Prayer,  the,  i,  212  sq. 

Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  i,  362 

Louis,  Saint,  i,  335 

Philippe,  ii,  336  n. 

Lowndes,  Miss,  cited  ii,  16 
Lubbock,  cited,  i,  30 
Lucian,  i,  179,  11 5-6,  208,  242 
Lucilius,  i,  199  n. 
Lucretius,  i,  178,  198  sq. 

influence  of,  i,  306 

Ludovicus  Vives,  ii,  82 


Luthardt,  Professor,  ii,  367 
Luther,  i,  190,  415-417,  454,  457  sq., 

460  sq.,  463,  470;  ii,  82 
Liitzelbertfer,  ii,  354 
Lyall,  Edna,  ii,  393 
Lydia,  civilisation  in,  i,  138 
Lyell,  ii,  403 
Lyly,  cited,  ii,  24,  31  n. 
Lyons,  ii,  135  «. 
Lysimachos,  i,  179  71. 
Lyttleton,  ii,  149 

Mabad  al  Jhoni,  i,  260 

Mably,  ii,  211,  22,2, 

Macaulay,    ii,    332,    402  ;    cited,    i, 

45  71.;  ii,  175  ;  criticised,  ii,  106  «. 
McCosh,  cited,  ii,  161 
McCrie,  i,  418  «.,  419  «. ,  425  //. 
Machiavelli,  i,  363  sq.,  373-4  ;  ii,  28 
Mackay,  R.  W.,  i,  12  ;  ii,  325,  357 

quoted,  i,  146  «. ,  228  11. 

Mackenzie,  Georg-e,  ii,  loi,  158 

Macrobius,  i,  244 

Madison,  ii,  323 

Mag-i,  i,  66,  67 

Mag-ian  religion,  i,  66  sq. 

Magic  and  religion,  i,  43,  410  sq. 

in  Middle  Ages,  i,  369 

Magna  Graecia,  culture  of,  i,  144, 

1 50- 1 
Mahabharata,  the,  i,  58 
Mahaffy,  quoted,  i,  127-8,  131,  134, 

185  «. 
Mahdi,  Khalif,  i,  264 
Mahmoud,  Sultan,  i,  269,  270 
Maimonides,  i,  320,  334 
Maistre,  J.  de,  ii,  373 
Malebranche,  ii,  195 
Malesherbes,  ii,  235 
Malherbe,  ii,  183 
Malik,  i,  270 

Malthus,  i,  174;  ii,  367,  376 
Mamoun,  i,  265,  268 
Mandard,  ii,  7 
Mandeville,    ii,    136,    150,    168,    174, 

379 
Manfred,  i,  346 

Manichasism,  i,  229,  231,  307,  310 
Mannhardt,  ii,  381 
Mansel,  ii,  376 
Mansour,  Khalif,  i,  263 
Marcion  and  Marcionites,  i,  229 
Marcus  Aurelius,  i,  214,  216 
Mardouk-nadinakhe,  i,  45 
Mart^chal,   Sylvain,    i,    11;    ii,   226, 

245  n. 
Margat,  ii,  213 
Marguerite   of  Navarre,  i,  2  ;  ii,  5, 

II  sq.,  446 


446 


INDEX 


Maria  Theresa,  ii,  305 

Mariner,  cited,  i,  36 

Mariolatry,  i,  378 

Marius,  i,  203 

Marlowe,  ii,  28  sq. 

Marot,  ii,  5,  6 

Marri,  El,  i,  269 

Marriage,  ancient,  i,  249 

Marsig-lio  of  Padua,  i,  402 

Marsiiio  Ficino,  i,  304,  361,  363 

Marsy,  ii,  211 

Marten,  ii,  94 

Martin  Marprelate,  ii,  28 

Martin,  Mrs.  Emma,  ii,  331 

Martineau,  J.,  ii,  338  «.,  344 

cited,  ii,  200  n. 

Harriet,  ii,  414 

Martyrs,  i,  249  n. 

Mary  of  Hung-ary,  i,  433 

Marx,  ii,  325,  341,  370,  381 

Massey,  cited,  ii,  173 

Mass,  "the,  i,  298 

Masuccio,  i,  298  «.,-357 

Materialism,  i,  70,  127,  146-9,  152-3, 

156,    161,    334,   338;    ii,    88,    127, 

130,  143.  236,  240,  325,  372 
Mathematics,  rise  of,  i,  148 

English  in  i8th  century,  ii,  154 

Matter,     doctrines    concerning,    i, 

146  ;;.,  149,  169,  334 
Matthias  of  Janow,  i,  428 

Corvinus,  i,  433 

Maupassant,  ii,  385 

Maupertuis,  ii,  238,  272 

Maurice,    ii,   378;   cited,   i,    z-^t,   «., 

331 
Mauvillon,  ii,  288 
Maximillian  II,  ii,  49 
Maximus  Tyrius,  i,  214 
Mazarin,  ii,  183,  185 
Mazdeism,  i,  65  sq. 
Mazzini,  ii,  415 

Medicine,  Renaissance,  i,  369 
Meister,  ii,  225,  226 
Melanchthon,  i,  410,  454,  459,  460, 

463,  468,  470,  471  ;   ii,  3 
Melissos,  i,  145 
Menander,  i,  183 
Mencius,  i,  85 

Mendelssohn,  Moses,  ii,  274,  281 
Mendicant  Friars,  i,  375,  377 
Menippus,  i,  185 
Menzel,  cited,  i,  471 
Menzies,  Dr.,  cited,  i,  68,  81,  82,97 
Meredith,  ii,  392 
Merivale,  criticised,  i,  203-4 
Merodach,  i,  45,  62,  64 
Mersenne,  i,  4  ;  ii,  22-3,  89  n. 
Meslier,  ii,  212  sq. 


Mesopotamia,  cults  of,  i,  44 

religious  evolution  in,  i,  60  sq. 

Metempsychosis,  ii,  66,  268 
Metrodoros,  i,  161 

(the  second),  i,  177 

Meung,  Jean  de,  i,  373 

Mexico,  religions  of,  i,  87  sq. 

Me}',  ii,  211 

Mej'er,    E. ,   quoted,    i,    68,   77,    80, 

126  n.,  128,  130,  155  71. 

Louis,  ii,  197  sq. 

Mezentius,  i,  37 
Mezi^res,  i,  353 
Mezzanotte,  i,  360  11. 
Michael,  Emperor,  i,  288 

Scotus,  i,  345-6 

Michelet,  ii,  384  ;  cited,  i,  380,  414, 

463  «.,464  sq. 
Middleton,  i,  299;  ii,  136,  150,    166, 

170 
Miletos,  i,  125,  139,  146 
Militarism,  ii,  208,  347-S 
Militz,  i,  427 
Mill,  James,  ii,  375,  404 

J.S.,ii,  239,332,  338;/., 401,  404 

Millar,  J.,  ii,  163 

Miller,  Hugh,  ii,  364,  366 

Millot,  ii,  22,2, 

Milman,  ii,  325,  380  ;  cited,  i,  318  n. 

Milner,  Rev.  J.,  ii,  1 19 

Milton,  ii,  47  «.,  116 

Minnesingers,  i,  405 

Mirabaud,  ii,  224 

Mirabeau,  ii,  232 

Miracles,  i,  246  ii. 

Miriam,  i,  loi 

Mirza  Ali,  i,  281 

Mithra,  i,  67 

Mithraism,  i,  67,  69,  230,  231,  245 

Mitra,  cult  of,  i,  47 

Moabite  Stone,  i,  105  «. 

Mocenigo,  ii,  65 

Moffat,  cited,  i,  27  «.,  32 

Mohammed,  i,  27,  254  sq. 

Mohl,  ii,  403 

Moktader,  i,  268,  272 

Molech,  i,  102 

Moleschott,  ii,  372  n. 

Molesworth,  ii,  164 

Moli^re,  ii,  184 

Molinists,  ii,  208 

Mollio,  i,  422 

Molyneux,  i,  6  ;  ii,  164 

Mommsen,  i,  192  w.,  193,  195 

Monarchism  and  religion,  i,  45 

Monk,  ii,  144 

Monolatry,  i,  56,  81,  97 

Monotheism,   i,   60  sq.,   67,    77,  81, 

97,  iQO,  121,  173 


INDEX 


447 


Monroe,  ii,  2\~Zi 

Montag'u,  Ladv   Mary   \\"ortle\",  ii, 

Montaigne,    i,   479  ;  ii,    16  sq.,  181, 

204  «.,  240  ;  cited,  i,  2 
Montalembert,  cited,  i,  322  ;/.,  324 «. 
Montesquieu,  ii,  2t,2,  234  sq.,  379 
Moore,  G.,  ii,  393 
Moors.     (See  Arabs.) 
More,  Sir  T.,  i,  172,  475  sq. ;  ii,  1 

Henry,  ii,  97-8,  1 14 

Hannah,  ii,  392 

Morehead,  ii,  403  n. 

Morellet,  ii,  it^^, 

Morgan,  Professor  de,  cited,  ii,  32 

Morgan,  T.,  ii,  146,  150,  168 

Morison,  J.  Cotter,  i,  331  ;/. 

Morley,  J.,  i,  464  ;  ii,  338,  404 

cited,  ii,  219,  221,  234,  243,  271 

Mornay,  de,  ii,  15,  36 

Moroccan  Letters,  ii,  287 

Morris,  Rev.  J.,  ii,  119 

Morton,  Bishop,  ii,  27 

Moschus,  i,  79 

Moses,  i,  loi 

Mosheim,  cited,  i,  209,  231,  464;   ii, 

90,  264 
Motadhed,  i,  267 
Motaniid,  i,  267 
Motasim,  i,  266,  268 
Motawakkel,  i,  266,  268 
Motazilites,    the,    i,    260    sq. ,     280, 

350  n. 
Motecallemin,  the,  i,  274,  278,  350  w. 
Moxon,  ii,  331 
Mozdar,  i,  264 
Miiller,  J.,  ii,  258 
K.  O.,  124,  133,  163  yi.\  cited, 

Max,  cited,    i,    57  ;    criticised, 

i,  46  n. ,  94  n. 

Munter,  ii,  308 

Muratori,  ii,  312 

Murchison,  ii,  366 

Murray,    Professor     G.,     cited,     i, 

137  «.,  167  n. 
Musaeus,  ii,  258 
Musset,  ii,  385 
Mutianus,  i,  452 
Mylius,  ii,  283 
Mysteries,  Eleiisinian,  i,  179  n. 

Pythagorean,  i,  131 

Bacchic,  i,  208 

Mystery-plays,  Christian,  i,  320 
Mysticism,  i,  230  «. 

Arab,  i,  266,  271  sq. 

Mythology,  ii,  326,  380  sq. 

Nabonidos,  i,  44,  64 


Naigeon,  ii,  226,  243 

Nanak,  ii,  428 

Nantes,  revocation  of  Edict  of,  ii, 

208 
Napier,  ii,  158 
Naples,  froethought  in,  i,  356-7,419, 

426 
Napoleon,  i,  203  ;   ii,  384 
Nash,  ii,  28,  37 
Naturn  naturans,  i,  337 
"  Naturalist,"  use  of  word,  i,  2 
Naude,  Gabriel,  ii,  13  «.,  181 
Neander,  cited,  i,  467-8 
Nebo,  i,  45 
Necker,  ii,  246 

"  Negative  criticism,"  i,  17;  ii,  197 
Neo-Platonism,  i,  75,  185 
Nero,  i,  21 1 

Nestorians,  the,  i,  246,  262 
Netherlands,   i,    407  sq.,    414,    426, 

476  sq.,;  ii,  51  sq.,  197  sq.,  347 
Netzahuatlco}otl,  i,  39,  88  «. 
Nevill,  ii,  95 
Newman,  J.  H.,  ii,  189  «.,  356,  380 

F.  W.,  ii,  325,  338  «.,  356,  404 

— —  C.  R.,  ii,  356  n. 

New    Testament,    criticism    of,     ii, 

124,  146,  214,  220,  285,  325,  352  sq. 
Newton,  ii,  81,  116,  120  sq. ,  150,  361 
New   Zealand,    freethought    in,    ii, 

412 

superstition  in,  i,  44  n. 

Nichirenites,  ii,  424 
Nicholas,  the  painter,  i,  315  n. 

of  Amiens,  i,  328 

Nichols,  ii,  108 

Nicholson,  ii,  174 

Nicolai,  ii,  274 

Nicolaus  of  Autricuria,  i,  358,  405 

of  Cusa,  i,  356,  358,  407  ;  ii,  61 

Nicholas  HI,  Pope,  i,  387 

V,  Pope,  i,  357 

Nicoletto,  Vernias.  i,  359 
Nicon,  ii,  309 
Nietzsche,  ii,  371 
Nifo,  i,  359-360 
Niketas.     (Seelketas.) 
Ninon  de  TEnclos,  ii,  215 
Niphus.     (See  Nifo.) 
Nirvana,  doctrine  of,  i,  55 
Nodier,  cited,  ii,  it  n. 
Nominalism,    i,    293,   302    sq.,    329, 

341,  402,  430 
Nans,  doctrine  of,  i,  153 
Numa,  i,  364 

Numbers,  doctrine  of,  i,  148-9 
Nystrom,  ii,  351 

Occ.\M.     (See  William.) 


448 


INDEX 


Ochino,  i,  419,  468  ;  ii,  2,  378 

Og-ilvie,  cited,  ii,  178 

Oglethorpe,  ii,  239  n. 

Okeanos,  i,  127 

O'Keefe,  ii,  175 

Oldcastle,  i,  390 

Oldfield,  ii,  109 

Old  Testament,  criticism  of,  ii,  105, 

107,  124,144,  153,  196,  199,  277  sq., 

325;  331-2,  352  sq. 
Omar,  the  Khalif,  i,  257,  259  n. 
Omar  Khayyam,  i,  269  sq. 
Omens,  belief  in,  i,  195 
Orig-en,  i,  228,  240  sq.;   ii,  378      . 
Orleans,  Duchesse  d',  cited,  ii,  190 
Ormazd.     (See  Ahura  Mazda.) 
Orpheus,  i,  127  n. 
Orphicism,  i,  147  «. ,  148 
Ortlieb,  i,  374 
Orzechowski,  i,  440 
Osborn,  Major,  cited,  i,  262  n. 

Francis,  cited,  ii,  31  n. 

Ostrorog,  i,  438 
Overton,  ii,  95 

Ovid,  i,  206,  213;  ii,  364 

Owen,  Rev.  John,  i,ii  ;  cited,  i,  318 

71.,  319  «.,   364  «.,  368  «.;  ii,  18, 

19,  22 

Robert,  ii,  326,  332 

Robert  Dale,  ii,  319  «. 

Oxford  in  i6th  century,  ii,  24,  64 

in  i8th  centurj-,  ii,  136 

Ozanam,  cited,  i,  232  «. 

Pachacamac,  i,  89 

Padua,  school  of,  i,  354,  370,  438 

Paganism,  suppression  of,  i,  237 

Pagitt,  ii,  96 

Paine,  ii,  179,  317,  320  sq.,  324,327, 

35O'  361 
Paleario,  i,  423 
Palestrina,  ii,  4 
Paley,  ii,  231  ;  cited,  ii,  178 
Palmaer,  ii,  350 
Palmer,  Professor,  i,  255  «.,  256  n. 

Eliliu,  ii,  322,  328 

Pannonicus,  i,  433 

Pantheism,  i,  2,  48,  74,  83,  132,  280, 
361,  Z^2>^  374'  466  ;  ii,  69,  195,  200, 
221,  325 

Paolo  Giovio,  i,  364  n. 

Papacy,    growth     of,    i,     310    sq. , 

354  sq. 

power  of,  1,  317  sq.,  355 

hostility  to,    i,    311,    357,    366, 

371,  391,  442  sq. 
Paris,  university  of,   i,   336,    338-9, 

3.S2,  397,  398,'404-5 
Parker,  Archdeacon,  ii,  106 


Parker,  Theodore,  ii,  325,  356 

Thomas,  ii,  350 

Parkes,  Professor,  cited,  ii,  426 

Parmenides,  i,  139,  145 

Parr,  ii,  378 

Parsees,  the,  i,  112,  280 

Parsons,  ii,  30 

Parvish,  ii,  144 

Pascal,  ii,  185,  186,  188 

Paschasius  Radbert,  i,  296 

Passerano,  ii,  206 

Pastoret,  ii,  226 

Pastoris,  i,  439 

Paterini,  i,  313,  315,  398 

Patin,  Gui,  ii,  181 

Professor,  i,  133 

Patot,  Tissot  de,  ii,  222^ 

Pattison,    Mark,    i,   461,   464-5;    ii, 

156,  189 
Paul,  i,  224,  249 
of  Samosata,  i,  233 

II,  Pope,  i,  360 

Ill,  Pope,  i,  421 

IV,  Pope,  i,  423 

Paul,  Herbert,  ii,  143  n. 
Pauli,  Gregorius,  i,  441 
Paulicians,  the,  i,  288   sq.,  304   sq., 

306  sq. 

Paulus,  ii,  352 

Pavlovsky,  cited,  ii,  398  n. 

Pazmany,  i,  436 

Pearson,  Bishop,  ii,  31 

Peasant  wars,  i,  430,  433,  454 

Pecock,  i,  393  sq.;  ii,  34 

Pedro  II,  i,  381 

Pedro  de  Osma,  i,  384 

Peele,  ii,  37 

Felagianism,  i,  233  sq. ,  286 

Pelagius,  i,  232 

Pelham,  Professor,  i,  197  n. 

Pellicier,  ii,  1 1 

Pelling,  E.,  ii,  108 

Penn,  ii,  123 

Pentateuch,    criticism    of,     i,    463  ; 
ii,  124,  144,  146,  195  sq.,  267 

Pericles,  i,  153-6 

Perrault,  cited,  ii,  182 

Perrens,  cited,  i,  2  «.,  13,  358 

Persecution,  primitive,  i,  t,2)  ^^' 

Christian,  i,  226,  235,  237,  299, 

317   sq.,  325,  445   sq.;  ii,  4,  5,  26, 
39.  40,   54,    73,  123,  127,  147,  158, 
161  sq.,  183,  210  sq.,  257,  328  sq., 
350-1,  353.     (See  Inquisition.) 
Greek,  i,  154,  156  sq.,  171,179, 


182,  1 89- 1 90 

Roman,  i,  196-7,  214 


Persia,  religions  of,  i,  64  sq. 
freethought  in,  i,  64,  271 


INDEX 


449 


Persia,   ciilUiix--liistory  of,    i,    148, 

271,  280  sq. 
Peru,  ancient  fVi'i-tluniylU    in,  i,  2!^, 

89-90 

relig'ion  ol",  i,  88 

modern  tVeellunii;lU  in,  ii,  349 

Perug'ino,  i,  360 
Pessimism,  i,  132 
Pestalozzi,  ii,  301  ». 
Peter  the  Hermit,  i,  31J 

tlie  Great,  ii,  ,^09 

of  AUiaco,  i,  388 

de  Briieys,  i,  312 

Martyr,  i,  419 

of  St.  Cloud,  i,  372 

of  Vaux,  i,  316 

Petit,  Claude,  ii,  183 
Petrarch,  i,  351  «.,  352  sq.,  368 
Petrie,  W.  M.  F.,  cited,  i,  73  notes 
Petrobrussians,  the,  i,  312 
Petronius,  i,  208 


P 


eucer,  1,  472 


Peyrat,  ii,  35S 
Pevr^re,  ii,  196  sq. 
Pfaff,  ii,  258 
Pfeiff,  ii,  350 
Pfeiffer,  i,  472 
Pheidias,  i,  156 
Pherekydes,  i,  147 
Philanthropic  Institute,  ii,  275 
Philips,  A.,  i,  7 
Philiskos,  i,  197 
Phillips,  Stephen,  quoted,  ii,  74 
Philo,  i,  119,  333  ;  cited,  i,  iSo  n. 
Philolaos,  i,  149 

Phoenicia,  religfious   evolution  in,  i, 
75  sq.,  99 

freethought  in,  i,  78-9 

Photinus,  i,  247 

Photius,  i,  288 

Phrenology,  ii,  t,t,2,  382 

Pico  della  JMirandola,  i,  361.  362  sq. 

Pierre  Aureol,  i,  402 

Pierre  d'Aill)',  i,  349  «.,  404 

Piers  Ploughman,  vision  oJ\  i,  389 

Piefisni,  ii,  262 

Pietro  of  Abano,  i,  348,  366 

Pilking-ton,  Bishop,  cited,  ii,  33 

Pindar,  i,  130-1 

Pinkerton,  cited,  i,  294 

Pirnensis,  i,  438 

Pitt,  the  elder,  ii,  146,  169 

the  yoimger,  ii,  177 

Pius  II,  i,  356 

IV,  1,  423 

V,  i,  423  ;  ii,  4 

Plainer,  ii,  302 

Plato,  i,  146,  165,  166,  168  sq. 
Platonism,  i,  227  sq.,  361 
VOL.    II 


Playfair,  ii,  154 

Pliny,  i,  184,  207-S,  2og 

Plotinus,  i,  74 

Plutarch,   i,    140,    153,    155   ?/.,    156, 

180  >/.,  188-9 
Poe,  ii,  394 
Poetr^',  Greek,  i,  12S 
Poland,    culture-history  of,    i,  437  ; 

ii'  55;  308 
Pole,  Cardinal,  i,  364  n. 
Polybius,  i,  187,  365  ;/ 
Polytheism,  i,  42  sq.,  59,  71,  22b 
Pomare,  i,  35 
Pombal,  ii,  315 
Pompeius,  i,  203  n. 
Pomponazzi,  i,  367  sq.,369 
Pomponius  Lsetus,  i,  370 
Poole,  R.  L.,  cited,  i,  304 
Pope,  ii,  141-2,  150 
Porphyry,  i,  242-3 
Porteous,  Bishop,  cited,  ii,  iSo 
Portugal,  inquisition  in,  i,  316 

freethought  in,  ii,  315 

Posidonius,  i,  245 

Postell,  ii,  1 1 

Potapenko,  ii,  398 

Pougens,  ii,  226 

Poushkine,  ii,  398 

Prades,  Abbe  de,  ii,  222,  224,  225,  241 

Praxeas,  i,  2t,t, 

Praj'er,  popular  view  oi,  i,  t,t, 

Preaching,  early,  i,  215  n. 

Premontval,  ii,  224,  225,  227 

Press  Licensing  .A.ct,  ii,  99,  109,  1 10 

Prideaux,  ii,  108 

Priestcraft,  i,  26,  33  n. 

Priesthoods,  evolution  of,  i,  59,  61, 

69,  91,  136-7 
Priestley,  ii,  156,  343 
Printing,  rise  of,  i,  456,  457  n. 
Proclus,  i,  246 
Prodikos,  i,  165 
Progress,  i,  143 
Prophecy,  i,  107,  108,  110 
Prophets,  Hebrew,  i,  i04sq. ,  1  losq. 
Protagoras,  i,  139,  157 
Protestantism  in  Italy,  i,  417  sq. 

fortunes  of,   i,    425,    436,   455, 

459,  469,  471.    (See  Reformation.) 
Provence,  civilisation  of,  i,  315,  317 

Providence,  popular  view  of,  1,  2>2> 

Psammetichus,  i,  132 

Psychology,  ii,  326,  381  sq. 

Ptolemy,  i,  1S4  ;/.,  225  n. 

Puffendorf,  ii,  307 

Pulci,  i,  358 

Punjaub,  tmcient,  freethought  in,  i, 

53.  56 

2G 


45° 


INDEX 


Piinjer,  cited,  ii,  280,  281 
Puritanism,  ii,  89,  99,  317-8 
Pusey,  cited,  ii,  262,  280 
Pyrrho,  i,  176-7,  187 
Pyrrhonism,  i,  186-7 
Pythagoras,  i,  139,  147  sq.;  ii,  364 
Pythagforeanism,  i,  148  sq. 

Quakers,  ii,  222,  321 
Quetzalcoatl,  i,  88 
Quinet,  ii,  373,  384 

Rabanus,  i,  293,  298-9 

Rabelais,  i,  471  ;  ii,  6  sq. 

Rabia,  i,  271 

Race-character,  theories  of,    i,   64, 

101-2,  123  sq.,  174-5,  193,  417  sq., 

448,  449 
Raleigh,  ii,  28  sq. 
Ramsay,  Chevalier  de,  ii,  209 

W.  M.,  cited,  i,  126  n. 

Ramus,  ii,  60,  82-3 

Ranke,  cited,  i,  415,  457  n. 

Raoul  de  Houdan,  i,  319 

Rappolt,  ii,  258 

Rashdall,  Dr.,  cited,  i,33i,  370 

Rastus,  i,  25  n. 

Rationalism  and  Rationalist,  use  of 

terms,  i,  5,  8  ;  ii,  95,  125,  285,  286 
Rationalist    Press    Association,   ii, 

405  n. 
Ratramnus,  i,  296-7 
Rawley,  ii,  32 

Rawlinson,  Canon,  cited,  i,  69 
Ray,  John,  ii,  108 
Raymond  Berenger,  i,  319  sq. 

of  Sebonde,  i,  408  ;  ii,  16 

Archbishop,  of  Toledo,  i,  381 

Raynal,  ii,  211,  z^i,  253,  328 
Reade,  Winwood,  ii,  326 
Realism,  philosophic,  i,  146,  302  sq., 

402,  430 

Reason,  deification  of,  i,  213;  ii, 
248  sq. 

religious  defence  of,  i,  293 

Reboult,  ii,  212 

Recared,  i,  381 

Rechenberg,  ii,  259 

Reformation,  the,  politically  con- 
sidered, i,  413  sq. 

in  Britain,  i,  449  sq.,  473  sq. 

— —  in  France,  i,  443  sq. 

in  Germany,  i,  413  sq. 

in  Hungary,  i,  433  sq. 

in  Italy,  i,  417  sq. 

in  the  Netherlands,  i,  476  sq. 

in  Poland,  i,  439  sq. 

in  Spain,  i,  425 

Reformers,  anti-pagan,  i,  237 


Regis,  ii,  194 

Regnard,  ii,  193 

Reimarus,  ii,  278,  284 

Reimmann,  i,  1 1 

Reinach,  i,  122  )i. 

Reinhard,  ii,  339 

Reinhold,  i,  472 

Religion  and  conquest,  i,  43-5,  47 

psychology  of,  i,  26 

of  lower  races,  influenceof,  i,43 

Remigius,  i,  297 

Renaissance   in    Italy,  freethought 

ill.  .i-  343  sq- 

in  France,  i,  371,  396 

in  England,  i,  371,  387  sq. 

Renan,  ii,  325,  350,  358,  381 

cited,  i,   loi,    102,  209,  274  «., 

-'79''-.  335.348,353'  378 
Renee,  Princess,  i,  421 
Reuchlin,  i,  413 
Reuter,  H.,  cited,  i,  13,  293  n. 
Reville,  Dr.  A.,  i,  88  ;/.,  97 
Revolution,  French,  ii,  179,  245  sq. 

American,  ii,  317 

Rewandites,  the,  i,  264 

Reynard  the  Fox,  i,  372-3,  405 

Rheticus,  i,  472 

Richardson,  cited,  ii,  166 

Richelieu,  ii,  181 

Richter,  ii,  353 

Riddle,  i,  14,  15 

Riem,  ii,  274 

Rihoriho,  i,  35 

Rings,  the  Three,  i,  350 

Ripley,  G.,  ii,  373  n. 

Ritchie,  cited,  ii,  164 

Ritual  and  ritualism,  i,  29 

Rivarol,    ii,    232,    250  sq. ;  cited,    ii, 

209  n. 
Roalfe,  Matilda,  ii,  331 
Robertson,  W. ,  ii,  164 

ProfessorCroom,  cited,  11,83  '*• 

Robespierre,  ii,  z^t^z,  250 

Robinet,  ii,  226,  238 

Rolf  Krakc,  i,  37 

Roman  religion,  i,  193,  204  sq.,  209, 

212 

law,  i,  214 

Romano,  ii,  31 1, 

Rome,  papal,  i,  311,354 

Romilly,  ii,  401 

Ronsard,  ii,  12 

Roos,  ii,  3 

Roscelin,  i,  302  sq. ,  328 

Rose,  ronian  de  la,  i,  373 

Rossi,  INI.  A.  de,  i,  370 

Rousseau,  J.  B.,  ii,  215 

J.  J.,  ii,  211  sq.,2i8,  233,    244, 

253 


INDEX 


451 


Royal  Soi'iel)-,  ii,  95 

Riidiger,  ii,  272 

Riidrauf,  ii,  259 

Riig-e,  ii,  370 

Rum  Bahadur,  i,  25  ii. 

Rupp,  ii,  340 

Ruskin,  ii,  391 

Russia,  ii,  306,  398,  419  si]. 

Rust,  ii,  107 

Ruteboeuf,  i,  319 

Rutherford,  ii,  158 

Rydbergf,  ii,  350 

Rvswyck,  i,  408 

Sabbath,  origin  oi,  i,  1 1 1 

Sabellius,  i,  233 

Sack,  ii,  268  ;;. 

Sacraments,  Mexican,  i,  87,  89 

Sacred  Books,  i,  40-41,  137,  191,215 

Sacrifices,  causation  of,  i,  49,  93  sq. 

— —  early  disbelief  in,  i.  41,  49,  62, 

85.89.  213 

human,  i,  03,  85,  87,  89 


Sadducees,  i,  120 
Sadi,  i,  272 
Saga,  ii,  4 
Sahagun,  i,  90 
Sainte-Beuve,  ii,  373,  3S6 

cited,  ii,  184  n. 

St.  Bartholomew,  massacre  of,  ii,  13 

St.  Evremond,  ii,  193 

St.  Glain,  ii,  207  n. 

St.  Hilaire,  B.,  cited,  i,  57 

Geoffroy,  ii,  365 

St.  Simon,  ii,  336 

Saintsbury,  cited,  i,  373 

Saisset,  cited,  ii,  375 

Saladin,  i,  350 

Salaville,  ii,  250 

Sales,  Deslisle  de,  ii,  211,  226 

Salverte,  ii,  379 

Salvian,  i,  239,  250 

Samaritans,  i,  1 1 1  ;/. 

Samoans,  religion  ^:)U  ',  34-35 

Samson,  ii,  278 

Sanchez,  ii,  60,  74 

Sanchoniathon,  i,  77 

Sand,  George,  ii,  385 

Sankara,  i,  51 

Saracen  culture,  i,  1  iQ,  274  sq.,  319, 

350.     (See  Arabs.) 
Satan,  i,  112,  114 
Saturninvis,  i,  229 
Satyre  jSIcnippde,  ii,  20 
Saul,  i,  101 
.Saunderson,  ii,  131 
Savages,  freethought  among,  i,  32, 

33sq.,38sq.,42 
religion  ot,  1,  i-,,  30  sq. 


Savages,  ethics  of,  i,  28 

mental  life  of,  i,  24  sq. 

Savile,  ii,  121 

Saviour-Gods,  i,  87 

Savonarola,  i,  351,  360,  363,  417  si]. 

Sayce,  cited,  i,  62 

Sayous,  i,  13 

Sbinko,  i,  429 

Scsevola,  i,  200  n. 

Scaliger,  cited,  ii,  5 

Scandinavia,  freethought  in  ancient, 

in  modern,  ii,  399 

Scaurus,  i,  202 

Sceptic.     (See  Skeptic.) 

Schade,  ii,  275 

Schaffle,  ii,  380 

Schelling,  ii,  303,  305,  369 

Scherer,  E.,  ii,  232,  386 

Schiller,  ii,  292 

Schism,  the  Great  Papal,  i,  354  sq. 

Schlegel,  A.,  quoted,  i,  163 

Schleiermacher,  ii,  305,  351 

Schmidt,  W.    A.,   cited,   i,    12,    189, 

204   ».,  210  71. 

Schmidt,  J.  L. ,  ii,  266 

Schmiedel,  ii,  360 

Scholastics,  the,  i,  302  sq.,  2,2>2^  sq- 

Schoner,  ii,  56 

Schopenhauer,  ii,  370 

Schopp,  ii,  70-1 

Schrader,  i,  126 

Schulz,  ii,  287 

Schiirer,  i,  14S 

Schwartz,  ii,  259 

Schwegler,  i,  192  n. 

Schweizer,  cited,  i,  37  )i. 

Science,  ancient,   i,  61-3,  95,    138, 

140,    141,   149,   15^.   157'  166,   175, 

.84 
Scot,  Reginald,  1,3;  u,  25,  203 

VV.,  ii,  108 

Scotland,  Reformation  in,  i,  415,  450 
freethought   in,  ii,  101,  15S  sq., 

410  sq. 
Scott,  Thomas,  ii,  :^2^,  357 

Walter,  ii,  387 

Secularism,  ii,  331 

Sedillot,  cited,  i,  257  ;/. 

Segarelli,  i,  378  sq. 

Selden,  ii,  91 

Sembat,  i,  2S9  n. 

Semele,  i,  126 

Semites,   religions   of,   i,  44,  97  ^l-' 

123  sq.,  139  .    ^      o 
theories  concerning,  1,  04,  00, 

101-2 
Semitic     intluence    on     Greeks,     i, 

122  sq.,  138 


45- 


INDEX 


Semler,  ii,  277  sq. 

Seneca,  i,  207,  214 

Serre,  De  la,  ii,  224 

Serra,  ii,  312  n. 

Seivetus,  i,  461  sq.  ;  ii,  3,  378 

Seton-Merriman,  ii,  393 

Sevignt^,    Madame    de,  i,   2   n.  ;     ii, 

Sextus    Empiricus,  i,  186-7  '■>  '■'    '4' 

17,30,  224 
Shaftesbury,  i,  6;  ii,  109,   120,    132, 

143). H9i  150,  168,  240 

cited,  i,  7  71. 

Shakespeare,  ii,  34  sq. 

Sharpe,  i,  113  ;  ii,  344 

Shelley,  ii,  326,  386 

Sherlock,  W. ,  i,  4  ;  ii,  123,  149,  150 

Shiites,  the,  i,  261  sq.,  281  ;;. 

Sib3'lline  books,  i,  202  ;/. 

Sichel,  W. ,  criticised,  ii,  171,  172 

Sicily,  culture  of,  1,319,  337,  344 

Sidg-wick,  H.,  cited,  ii,  91  u. 

Sidney,  A.,  ii,  95 

Sidney,  Sir  P.,  ii,  64-5 

Sifatites,  the,  i,  261 

Sikhs,  ii,  428 

Silvanus,  i,  289 

Simeon  Duran,  Rabbi,  i,  350 

Simon  de  Montfort,  i,  321,  t^zTii  324 

Simon  of  Tournay,  i,  326-7,  ^.^i^y 

Simon,  Richard,  ii,  195  sq. 

Simonides,  i,  152 

Simpson,  cited,  ii,  180 

Simson,  ii,  131 

Sismondi,  quoted,  i,  329  «. ;   ii,  5S  ;/. 

Sixtus  IV,  i,  359,  367 

Skelton,  cited,  ii,  166 

Skeptic,  meaning- of  word,  i,  12 

Skepticism,  academic,  i,  183  sq. 

Pyrrhonic,  i,  12,  176-7 

dialectic,  among-  Christians,  i, 

479;  ii,  139,  140,  188 

popular,  among-   Christians,  i. 


ZZ^  479 
Skytte,  ii,  257 

Slavery,  Christianity  and,  i,  225 

Paine  and,  ii,  320  ti. 

Smalbroke,  ii,  149 

Smith,  .\dam,  ii,  162,  170,  376,  379 

Jolin,  ii,  97 

W.  Robertson,  i,  49,  359 

S.,  i,  6 

SmN'rna,  ancient,  i,  124-5 

Social  causation,   ii,    148,    153,    172, 

173.    J  79.    253,   320,    326-7',  340-1, 

450-1 
Socialism,  ii,  326,  341,  418  sq. 
Socinianism,    ii,   2,    54,   56,  115  sq., 

'3',  378 


Sociology,  i,    365  sq.,  410;   ii,   326, 

379  ^q- 

Sokrates,  i,  160,  165  sq.,  172,  173 
Solomon,  i,  101 

ben  Gebirol,  i,  335 

Sorbonne,  the,  i,  447  ;  ii,  S 

Sorcery,  belief  in,  24 

Sorel,  cited,  ii,  305 

Soury,  cited,  ii,  240 

South,  Dean,  ii,  124 

vSouthey,  ii,  387-8,  389 

South  Place  Institute,  ii,  342 

Southwell,  ii,  330 

Sozzini,   the,   i,   435,   441  ;   ii,   2,  15, 

^  55  sq- 

Spain,  culture  history  of,  i,  380  sq. ; 

ii.  57'  314 
freethoug-ht  in,    i,    381    sq. ;  ii. 


337 


Reformation  in,  i,  425 


Spalding,  ii,  277 
Spencer,  J.,  ii,  112 
H.,  ii,  326,  377,  380- 


1 ,  404,  407 


cited,  i,  34 
Speusippos,  i,  180 
Spiegel,  cited,  i,  69  n. 
Spina,  Alfonso,  i,  366 
Spinoza,   i,   4,    17,  335,  340,  47S  ;   ii, 

46,  107,  145,   19 -i  sq.,  257  sq.,  260 
Spinozism,  ii,  204,  268 
Spiritiialcs^  the  sect,  i,  2 
Sprat,  i,  3    . 

Sprenger,  cited,  i,  255  «.,  256  n. 
Stafford,  Sir  W.,  ii,  312  v. 
Stancari,  i,  440 
Stanhope,  ii,  loS 
Stationers'  Company,  ii,  no 
Statins,  i,  208 
Staudlin,  i,  12  ;  ii,  300 
Stebbing-,  ii,  149 
Steele,  ii,  132 
Steinbart,  ii,  276 
Steinbuhler,  ii,  286 
Steno,  ii,  364  n. 

Stephen,  Sir  J.,  cited,  i,  399  ;/. 
Sir  Leslie,  i,  13  ;  ii,  404  ;  cited, 

ii,  114,  129  ;/.,   130  )i.;  criticised, 

ii,  130  ;/.,  149  sq. 
Stesichoros,  i,  130 
Stewart,  H.  F.,  cited,  i,  252-3 
Stillingfleet,  i,4;   ii,  q8-9,    104,  105, 

119 
Stilpo,  i,  180 
Stoicism,  i,  176,  199,  207 
Stosch,  ii,  258 
Stout,  Sir  R. ,  ii,  412 
Strabo,  i,  168  «.,  187-8 
Strannik,  cited,  ii,  420  n. 
Strasburg-  Cathedral,  i,  405  n. 


INDEX 


453 


Strato,  i,  iSo 

Strauss,    ii,    325,   346,  350,  352   sq., 

37O'  3^1 
Strij^olniks,  the,  ii,  309 

Strindbergf,  ii,  351 

Stromer,  ii,  350 

Siruensee,  ii,  308 

Strutt,  ii,  143,  169 

Stuart,  Dean,  ii,  97 

Stiibbs,  Bishop,  ii,  414 

Stuckenbergf,  cited,  ii,  296,  29S,  301 

Stiidemund,  cited,  i,  418 

Suaroz,  i,  407 

Slid  on  ins,  i,  209 

Suf  iism,  i,  271,  280 

Sulla,  i,  203 

Sully,  Professor,  cited,  i,  39 

Sun-Gods,  worship  of,  i,  70,  76,  87, 

88, loi, 125 
Sunnites,  the,  i,  261 
Svodberg-,  ii,  349 

Swift,  ii,  132-3,  149,  150  ;   cited,  i,  6 
Swinburne,  ii,  326,  388 
Switzerland,  reformation  in,   i,  414, 

421,456,45984. 

freethou^ht  in,  ii,  315,  346 

Sykes,  A.  A.,ii,  149  ;  quoted,  ii,  167 

Sylvester  II,  i,  319  n. 

— —  Bernard,  i,  329 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  cited,  i,  343  ;/.,  421 

Syng-e,  ii,  134  «•>  164 

Tabari,  cited,  i,  264  n. 
Taborites,  the,  i,  431 
Tacitus,  i,  209 
Taillandier,  cited,  i,  294 
Taine,  ii,  375,  386 
Talfourd,  ii,  331 
Talmud,  thought  in,  i,   120-1 
Tamerlane,  i,  268 
Tammuz,  i,  loi 
Tanquelin,  i,  313 
Tarde,  ii,  326,  380 
Taouism,  i,  82  sq. 
Tasmanians,  religion  of,  i,  99 
Tail,  i,  83 
Tauler,  i,  406 
Tayler,  ii,  344 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  ii,  1 12 

'—  Robert,  ii,  330 

Tegner,  ii,  349 

Telesio,  ii,  82 

Teller,  ii,  277 

Templars,  the  Knights,  i,  383,  400-2 

Temple,  SirW.,  ii,  103 

Ten,  theories  oU  i,  150 

Tenison,  ii,  107 

Tenneman,  cited,  ii,  117 

Tennyson,  ii,  326 


Teodori,  1,  422 

Tertullian,  i,  235,  239,  249  ;   ii,  i  1  1 

Tel  ens,  li,  302 

Telzel,  i,  416 

Teuftel,  i,  193-4 

Texte,  cited,  ii,  141-2 

Thackeray,  ii,  392 

Thales,  i,  138  sq. 

Thallos,  i,  78 

Thamamians,  the,  i,  273  n. 

Thea.genes,  i,  151,  153 

Theodora,  i,  250 

Theodore  of  Mopsuestia,  i,  247 

Theodoric,  i,  252 

Theodoros,  i,  179-180 

Theodosius  II,  i,  245  ;/. 

Theodotos,  i,  232 

Thcopli  ila  nth  ropy,  ii,  321 

Theophrastos,  i,  182 

Thierrys,  the  two,  ii,  384 

ThirUvall,  i,  124  >i. 

Thirty-nine  Articles,  tlie,  i,  475 

Thirty  Years'  War,  ii,  255 

Tholuck,  i,  12-13  ;  cited,  ii,  257,  262 

Thomas   Aquinas,  i,  337,   339,   340, 
366,  378,  403 

Thomas  h.  Kempis,  i,  407 

Thomas,  Dr.  R.  H.,  ii,  321  >i. 

Thomasius,    Jenkin,  i,    1 1 ;    ii,   259; 
cited,  ii,  256 

Christian,  ii,  263 

Thompson,  F.,  11,389 

Thomson,  J.,  ii,  38S 

Thonrakians,  i,  289  71. 

Thoreau,  ii,  394 

Thrakians,  the,  i,  124  n. 

Thukydides,  i,  156  w.,  168 

Thunder-Gods,  i,  97 

Tiberius,  i,  210-212 

Ticknor,  cited,  i,  385 

Tiele,  cited,  i,  68  ;   criticised,  i,  44 

Tillotson,  ii,  104,  123 

Tindal,  ii,  133,  137-  '45>  '49i  '68 

Tocco,  i,  13 

Tocqueville,  cited,  ii,  233 

Toland,    i,  6;  ii,    109,    126  sq.,    149, 
150-1,  168,  197 

Tolstov,  ii,  398 

Toltecs,  the,  i,  88 

Tonga  Islands,  freethoughl  in,  i,  36 

Torild,  ii,  349 

Torquemada,  i,  386 

Torricelli,  ii,  310 

Torture,  ecclesiastical,  i,  342 

Toulmin,  ii,  174,  175 

Tourguenief,  ii   39S 

Tourneur,  ii,  37-8 

Towers,  ii,  gS 

Toy,  ii,  408 


454 


INDEX 


Tractarianism,  ii,  387 

Transubstantiation,  i,  296  sq. 

Transvaal,  tVeethougfht  in,  ii,  347 

Trebonian,  i,  250 

Trenchard,  ii,  132 

Triads,  i,  70 

Tribbechov,  i,  1 1  ;  ii,  259 

Trinity,  dogma  of,  i,  74,  227,  232-3, 
-47'  296,  304,  328,  329,  2>:i?,,  339, 
404,  419,  440,  461.  (See  Ihii- 
tarianism.) 

Trinius,  i,  1 1 

Trouv^res  and  Troubadours,  i,  318 

sq-,  373 
Turgot,  n,  232,  244 
Turkey,  civilisation  of,  ii,  428-9 

freethought  in,  ii,  429  ;/. 

Turlupins,  i,  375 

Turner,  ii,  174 

Turpin,  ii,  212 

Turretin,  i,  473 

Twelve,  sacred  number,  i,  96,  126 

Twofold   truth,  doctrine  of,  i,  339, 

368,  388,  404  ;  ii,  1 17,  199,  299 
Tylor,  Dr.,  ii,  381  ;  cited,  i,  24,  31 
Tyndall,  ii,  404 
Tymiinos,  i,  126 


Ubaldini,  i,  347  ;;. 
Ueberweg,   quoted,    i,     171-2, 

3°5     .  ^ 

opinions  of,  ii,  417  11. 


294, 


Uhlich,  ii,  340 

Uladislaus  II,  i,  433 

Ulrich  von  Hutten,  i,  413,  426 

Undereyck,  ii,  259 

Unitarianism,  early,  i,  255,  335,  351, 

414.  453'  474 
in  England,  ii,  32,39,  94,  122-3, 

^23^  J  39'  -'00,343  sq. 

in  Hungary,  i,  435 

in  Poland,  i,  439  sq. ;   ii,  55  sq. 

in  Italy,  ii,  3 

in  Holland,  ii,  54 

in  America,  ii,  323,  412 

I'nited    States,  freethought    in,   ii, 

3'7  ■'^q-'394  sq-,407  sq- 

German  freethinkers  in,  341-2 

Universalism,  i,  63 

Universities,  low  ebb  of  culture  in, 

ii,  170 

German,    i,   413,   470;    ii,  355, 

417  sq. 

Swiss,  ii,  346 

Upanishads,  philosophy  of,  i,  49S(.|. 
Urban  \TII,  ii,  77 
Urstitius,  ii,  60 
Utilitarianism,  1,213;   '■'  "^^ 
"Utilitarian  Associations,"  ii,  351 


Valentinus,  i,  230 

Gentilis,  i,  469 

Valla,  Lorenzo,  i,  355-6,  368 
Vallee,  ii,  14 
Vambery,  cited,  i,  28 1 
Van  der  Ende,  ii,  198 
V^anini,  i,  22  ;  ii,  60,  71  sq. 
Van  Mildert,  i,  14,  15 
V^arro,  i,  200  >i. 
Varuna,  i,  47  sq. 
Vasari,  cited,  i,  360  ?i. 
Vassor,  ii,  190 
Vatke,  ii,  325,  358 
Vaudois,  the,  i,  316  sq. 
Vaughan,  cited,  ii,  95 
Vauvenargues,  ii,  2t,2 
Vedanta,  i,  49  71. ,  53 
Vedas,  i,  30,  46 

translations  of,  i,  30  « 

skepticism  in,  i,  30,  47-8 

attacks  on,  i,  50-1 

X'ejento,  i,  21 1 
X'elasquez,  ii,  59 
Verlaine,  ii,  385 
Verrall,  i,  163-4 
Verus,  S.  G. ,  ii,  356  ;/. 
Viau,  ii,  183 

Vice,  i,  26  H.  ;  11,310,379 
X'igilantius,  i,  244,  316  ;/. 
Viilani,  G.,i,  305 
Villari,  cited,  i,  361,  362  n. 
Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  ii,  364 
Virchow,  ii,  417 
\'iret,  ii,  1 
Virgil,  i,  206 
Virgilius,  St.,  i,  291,  35S 
Virgin-Mother-Goddess,  i,  87 
Voelkel,  ii,  54 
Vogt,  ii,  372  n. 

Volney,  ii,  232,  244,  328,  336,  381 
\'olta,  ii,  313 

Voltaire,    i,    22,    135,    352  ;    ii,    172, 
215  sq.,   231,   239,    244,    272,   359, 

364' 379 
-cited,   i,    2   ;/.,   286;  ii,    136  «., 

,  138'  171.. 
X'orstius,  ii,  39 

Wagner,  Richard,  ii,  39S 

Tobias,  ii,  259 

Wahabi  sect,  i,  284 

Waitz,  ii,  381 

Waldenses,  i,  2,    116  sq.,  422,   427, 

448 
\\  aldus,  i,  316 
Walid,  i,  263 
Wallace,  A.  R.,  11,367 

Dr.  Robert,  ii,  162 

Professor  W.,  cited,  1,  177  n. 


INDEX 


455 


Walter  Wm  dcr  Vo^afelvveide,  i,  405 
Walther,  cilod,  ii,  255-6 
Walvvyn,  ii,  95 
War  in  South  Africa,  cftVct   of,  ii, 

347-8 
Warburton,  ii,  136,  149,  150 
Ward,  Mrs.  Humphi-y,  ii,  393 

Lester,  ii,  326,  380 

Warton,  cited,  ii,  142 
Warville,  ii,  226 
Washing-ton,  ii,  317,  ^9  sq. 
Wasil  Ibn  Atta,  i,  260 
Waterland,  ii,  149,  150 
Wathek,  Khalif,  i,  267 

Watson,  Bishop,  ii,  176  n.^  t^zz.  328 

W.,ii,  388 

Watts,  C. ,  i,  II, 

H.  E. ,  cited,  ii,  59  11 

Wazon,  Bishop,  i,  310 

Weber,  A.,  cited,  i,  43,  49  «.,  54 

Em.,  ii,  259 

Wedderburn,  ii,  329 
Wegscheider,  ii,  352,  353 
Wellhausen,  ii,  325,  359 

quoted,  i,  103,  139 

Wen,  Emperor,  i,  85 
Werner,  ii,  363 
Wesley,  cited,  ii,  318  //. 
Wesleyanism,  ii,  170,  175 
Westphalia,  Peace  of,  ii,  255 
Wette,  de,  ii,  144,  352,  358 
Wheeler,  J.  M.,  i,  11 
Whewell,  ii,  366,  367 

cited,  ii,  90,  1 15 

Whiston,  ii,  131,  153 

White,  A.  D.,  i,  14,  40  ;   ii,  406,  407 

Whitfield,  ii,  170 

Whitman,  ii,  394 

Wiclif,  i,  376,  390,  391  sq.,  42S 

Wieland,  ii,  285-6 

Wier,  ii,  51,  203 

Wight  man,  ii,  39,  40 

Wilamowitz,  i,  126  n. 

Wilberforce,  ii,  329,  367,  392 

cited,  ii,  177 

Wildman,  ii,  95 
Wilkes,  ii,  173 
Wilkins,  Bishop,  ii,  104 
"Will  to  believe,"  i,  17 
William  of  Auvergne,  i,  338  11. 

of  Conches,  i,  330 

of  Occam,  i,  397,  402  sq. 

of  St.  Amour,  i,  376 

Williams,  Speaker,  cited,  ii,  2 
Willich,  cited,  ii,  271 


Winchell,  ii,  408 
Wiri'ker,  i,  405  n. 
Wisdom  of  Solomon,  i,  i  iS,  119 
Wise,  ii,  109,  142  ;/. 
Wislicenus,  ii,  340 
Witchcraft,  belief  in,  i,  24,  366,  411; 

ii,  13,50,  112 

—  assailed,  ii,  25,  51,  192,  203,  264 

Wilt,  John  de,  ii,  199 

WollTand  Wolffianisni,  ii,  266 

Wolhus,  ii,  259 

Wolseley,  Sir  C. ,  ii,  108 

Women,     freethoug^ht     among,     i, 

364  )i.  ;  ii,  186  «.,  414  ;/. ,"416 

orthodoxy  among,  ii,  148,  416 

position   of  earl}-   Christian,  i, 

250 
Wood,  Anthony  a,  cited,  ii,  2,3 
Wood  row,  ii,  408 
Woodward,  ii,  153 
Woolston,  ii,  1-^6,    137-8,    149,    1150, 

168 
Wordsworth,  ii,  387 

Bishop,  cited,  ii,  345 

Wright,  Susanna,  ii,  329  ;/. 

Frances,  ii,  414 

Writing,    antiquity    of.    i,    105    /;., 

192  n. 

Xenophanes,  i,  142,  144-5 
Xenophon,  i,  195 

Yahweh,  1,97,  100,  102,  104 
Yaska,  i,  50 
Yeats,  ii,  388 
Young:,  ii,  149 

Zaid,  i,  254-5 
Zapoyla,  i,  434 
Zarathustra,  i,  68 
Zebrzydowski,  i,  440 
Zeller,  ii,  346 

cited,  i,  148,  167  /;.;  ii,  418  11. 

Zendavesta, 

Zendekisiii    (Arab   atheism),    i,    255 

sq.,  258,  263,  264^.,  279 
Zeno  (the  elder),  i,  139,  145 

(the  Stoic),  i,  176  sq.,  183,  2i3«. 

Zeus,  i,  126,  132  sq. 

Ziska,  i,  430  sq. 

Zola,  ii,  385 

Zollikofer,  ii,  277 

Zoroastrianism,  i,  6g 

Zulus,  freethoug-ht  among-,  i,  35 

Z-wingli,  i,  458  sq. 


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